


In Her Wake

by Wrathion



Category: Life Is Strange (Video Game)
Genre: Alternate Universe - Supernatural Elements, F/F, Gen, Supernatural Elements
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2018-07-10
Updated: 2018-11-14
Packaged: 2019-06-14 04:43:39
Rating: Mature
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings, Graphic Depictions Of Violence, Major Character Death
Chapters: 12
Words: 32,424
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/15380913
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Wrathion/pseuds/Wrathion
Summary: Arcadia was just the first. The storm was only the herald. In its wake stride worse horrors. Two girls ride away from the ruins of a bay, into a reality splintering from its seams, the uphill battle of a horror in a man's mask, and secrets not even they are aware of, gnawing at the world's roots. Post-Episode 5, urban fantasy themes, rated M for violence and explicitness.(Set in a post-Polarized world with significant supernatural elements, grittiness, mixed in with some romance.)





	1. Meadowlark

**Author's Note:**

> Here we are, with a fan fiction that gnawed at my brain so hard I made an account just to post it. Here's to hope it works, eh? This story could be considered AU, with a noticeable amount of supernatural to show up, but the canon of the game itself remains intact. The story starts in the immediate aftermath of Polarized, so you don't need to know anything extra... just that this is going to be hell of a ride(or so I hope, at least). Enjoy! Drop a couple comments if you like it: no obligation, but it's always appreciated.

It was cold.

The wind pummeled away at the cliff and it was cold. The downpour struck her skin and intermingled with tears and it was cold. The roar of the storm shuddered in her core and it was cold. An arm stood wrapped around her for the whole of it, _her_ arm, and even that was ice cold.

Her tears were warm, though. Only they were.

The storm scarcely lasted beyond a handful of minutes, yet to Max Caulfield atop that cliff, it felt like long, stretched out hours of suffering. Hours of that tornado hammering away at the town.

At Arcadia Bay. 

Hours of flinging people and building aside. People she knew. Buildings she had been in.

The rain fell on her hands, and from them fell in scarlet drops, scarlet in the way only water mixed with blood could be. Blood that covered her hands, from wrist to fingertips. Blood no amount of water could wash away. Blood of an entire town, of nearly two thousand souls.

A single tear, and with that consigned to oblivion for a single, blue-haired girl.

The same girl stood next to her, an arm wrapped around Max's shoulders, shivering, quivering, tears welled up in her eyes yet held back from dropping by a titanic will. Chloe. Her Chloe.

The person she had killed two thousand people for. Including her parents.

But even the most torturous minutes could only be extended so far, and eventually the storm vanished, disappearing as swiftly as it had arrived and taking the Arcadia Bay with it. In every sense of the word, the town was _gone_ : merely a sea of rubble where it once stood.

To condemn two thousand to save one.

To be forced to make that choice. It was cruel, crueler than anyone should have been forced to do.

"Max." Max looked up into those cerulean eyes, eyes still full of unshed tears. "Are you-"

"Let's just... go." She didn't trust herself to say more. "Just-just leave this place." _Before I collapse in tears,_ were the unspoken words.

She understood. Her dear Chloe, she always did. Always.

The cloud cover broke as they left, and it rapidly dissipated, again sending the rays of the sun down on this forsaken corner of Oregon. It seemed peaceful. Calm. If not for the ruins of the Bay, Max could have even believed that this all was a dream. Yet it stood there, like a sore on the land, an image burned into her memory that she would forever carry.

One of the rays even shone on them, their clothes soaked wet, as if nothing had happened. The thought made her legs weak, barely able to support her weight. She was so tempted to let go, to slump and fall, to have someone else bear the weight... but it was not someone else. It was Chloe Elizabeth Price Max was leaning against, and the mere thought of doing that made her feel even worse than she did. 

"Max." A hushed whisper. "Do you see that?"

Max Caulfield raised her head to look, and came face to face with two black, beady eyes looking at her from the roof of Chloe's truck. 

As if oblivious to the disaster just minutes ago, the meadowlark inclined its head, somehow managing to appear utterly mischievous despite its yellow chest and streaked flanks glistening under the sunlight. Its gaze shifted from Max to Chloe back to Max to Chloe again. 

"I _have_ to take a picture of that." She spoke in hushed tones. It presented a perfectly... adorable picture! The bird seemingly noticed the appraisal it was held in, and turned its head sideways and up, in that sort of striking pose that looked off into a better future, the pose that would look fiercely inspiring on a determined face. It didn't manage to do anything but look even more adorable.

Max dug through her bag for the camera, soaking wet. "Damn. It's soaking. Hope it still works..." She brought it up to her eye, centered on the meadowlark, and pressed the button.

"You always take the shot, don't you?" Chloe chuckled.

 _Always take the shot._ A terrific chill ran through Max, and strength left her arms. The ground came closer, and then stopped as an arm wrapped itself around her. "Whoa. You okay, SuperMax?"

"Jefferson." Max breathed out. "He'd keep saying that. Always take the shot."

"Shit. Sorry." She helped her back to her feet. "Max, look at me. Jefferson is gone. They threw him in. He cannot hurt anyone again. Cannot hurt _you_ again." 

There was something calming in her gaze, that banished the dark memories for at least a moment. Then the meadowlark chirped, and even the memory of Jefferson couldn't prevent the shadow of a smile.

"Let's go, Bat-Max. Let's get you home."

Chloe practically dragged her to the truck, still shivering, and the meadowlark chirped at them the whole way from the roof of the truck. She smiled faintly at Max. "Now we sail onward."

"Right, Captain." Max couldn't help herself as Chloe gunned the engine, heading away from the storm and the bad memories.

Neither saw the meadowlark take off as the engine rumbled and fly westwards.

Neither saw it shudder mid-flight and fall, dead before it hit the ground.


	2. Long Roads and Ill Omens

"Still not working?" Chloe's voice cut through her focus. "You've been working on that for the last half hour."

Max sighed loudly and threw the phone on her lap. "Nope. It's soaked wet. Dead, for good." Over the last hour she had tried everything to get either of the phones to work, which considering the total of her knowledge of electronics, wasn't a lot. "We're officially cut off from the world."

 "Well, then thankfully we're in Oregon and not, say, Amazon. That'd be hella shitty." Chloe took another puff from her cigarette, and shook her head rather vigorously. "And we've enough fuel to get to proper civilization. Just."

 "I know." Max shrugged slightly. "It'd just be nice if I could call my parents, you know? So that they at least wouldn't be worried sick. They must be now."

 Chloe's jaw hardened ever so slightly, as she took one more breath of her cigarette and threw the stub from the window. "They must be."  _Oh shit._ Max mentally scolded herself. _Great job, SuperMax. Keep reminding her how you just killed both her parents, okay? That will surely make her feel better._

"Oh- sorry. I didn't mean to-"

"Nah, it's okay, SuperMax. I'm just... grumpy." She took out another cigarette and began to filch around for the lighter. "Besides... maybe they are still alive, right? It's... just a storm, those happen all the time. They-they cannot be dead. Not everyone."

Max wanted to believe that. Max _so_ wanted to believe that.  _Of course you want to believe that, don't you?_ A voice laughed, _that_ voice, who was Max yet not Max, that voice straight from a nightmare of horrors. _There has to be survivors. Hah. As if that changes anything. As if fifteen hundred dead for one girl is much better than two thousand for_ _one._

Shut up.

_Why would I?_ Nightmare Max laughed. _Why should I? Or is it so... easy to kill a whole fucking town when no one reminds you of it? And all for a selfish brat too weak to move on, too cowardly to blame herself for anything going wrong in her life and because of that ruining her life even further. Instead blaming everything around her, to the point she would rather turn her entire hometown into fucking glass._

Stop.

_Aaaand guess what? Out riding comes the superheroine Maxine Caulfield, and in the span of minutes wipes out Arcadia Bay with barely a trace left behind! Boom. Thought that would make her happy, right? SuperMax solving all her problems in one fell swoop, and damn the dead!_

I said stop, Max thought. Just... just shut up. Leave me alone.

_You can't shut me up, Max. I'm you. I'm your conscience, the sane person within the confines of your psycho brain. The angel sitting on the shoulders of a mass murderer._ Nightmare Max gave the mental equivalent of a shrug. _All for a girl still in love with a dead woman. And to think you still have that hope in your heart... pathetic._

SHUT UP!

"Max?" _Her_ voice dragged Max back to the real world, now aware of a hand clenched around her shoulder. "Fuck, Max, you alright? You were just... gazing off and looking hella angry, and clenching your fist as if it was wrapped around-" She suddenly silenced herself.

"Just-just thinking." Max wasn't sure she could keep saying much more. "No need to worry about me, Chloe."

"Hell if I'm gonna stop worrying about my Bat-Max." Chloe shook her head. "No fuckin' way, you hear me, Caulfield? No fuckin' way."

"Thanks, Che, but really, I'm... fine." Max wondered if there had ever been a more obvious lie in the history of man.

Chloe only chuckled grimly as she took in another puff, vigorously shaking her head. "Um, Max?" 

"Yeah?"

"I know, I promised you I'd at least take you back to your parents at Seattle, but mind if we, dunno, take a break? Cause you look like a goddamn wreck in dire need of some food and rest, and I'm wet, cold, hungry, tired as hell, and it's taking a fuckton of effort just to not fall asleep." She waved the cigarette for emphasis. "And a fuckton of cigarettes."

She had a point there. Both of them had effectively been running on adrenaline, and for Chloe, a fuckton of smokes.  "Rest and food." Max sighed quietly, and her stomach gave a rumble. "They sound like the best thing in the world right now." They didn't, but she didn't want to further Chloe's dark mood. Not so soon after having likely... killed her parents.

"Damn right they do." Chloe squinted visibly. "Think that's a gas station up ahead. Worst case, they'll have cold sandwiches and shitty coffee."

"Coffee." Max sighed in anticipation. "Even shitty gas station coffee. Just let it be liquid and have caffeine."

"You heard it!" Chloe spoke out to noone in particular. "The Supreme Max demands coffee, and her loyal minions will heed her call. Shitty gas station coffee, here we come!"

"You're... such a dork." Max said, the thinnest of smiles on her lips. That was Chloe Price for you. Always joking, no matter what.

"Hey, I did tell you I swear allegiance to you. I won’t have it said that Chloe Elizabeth Price doesn't keep her oaths." She drove in to the gas station. "It ruins my good girl reputation."

That elicited another chuckle from Max. "Well, you asked for it. Lead the way, loyal minion!"

"So shall I." Chloe parked, and tapped her in the shoulder. "Come on. We have a gas station to plunder." She gave a wistful look at it. "Ah, how we could crash that place up with your powers..."

"Chloe." Max's voice was stern. "I told you. I'm... not going to do that again. The reign of SuperMax is over."

"You're always super, Max. Even without super time powers." The blue-headed girl shook her head. "Anyway, out. We've to get our pirate game on."

"Just like old days?"

"Just like old days." Chloe looked at the truck. "We should get a flag."

The gas station had an air of... sluggishness around it, a pair of bored-looking clerks slumped behind the counter and a third seated in the shadow outside. Chloe had swiftly clambered up to one, currently half-hidden behind the pile of prepackaged sandwiches she had heaped in front of him.

"Excuse me, sir?" Max approached the other. 

"Yeah?" He yawned with a gaping mouth. "Whaddaya want, girl?" Every syllable was rolling off his lips at agonizing slowness.

_Oh God. Thank you, Snorlax, I'm feeling even sleepier now._

"Do you have a phone I can use? I... really need to make a call."

The man just grunted, and reached for something under the counter. A few seconds later, one large hand placed a bright red analog phone on the counter. "Go on. Keep it short, will ya?"

Max simply nodded, before lifting the handset and punching in her parents' number with hurry. Only a long, continuous beep greeted her. "I think the line is cut."

"Whaddaya mean the line is cut?" That seemed to instill a bit of vigor into the clerk, who snatched the handset from her and brought it to his own ear. "What now? This damn thing had been working half an hour ago!"

As the clerk's bulk vanished underneath the counter, Chloe sprang up at her shoulder, with two cups of coffee and a plastic bag stuffed with sandwiches. "How did it go?"

Max opened her mouth to reply, and was cut off by the bellow of the clerk still struggling somewhere behind the counter. "Andy! For Christ's sake, if you have fucked up the phone again I'll string you up by the balls!"

"How charming." Chloe shook her head. "Come on, Max: let's feast. We can always ask again just before wheeling out."

 

***

Chloe rolled her eyes. "Mind repeating that? I forgot my glutton decoder, sorry."

Max chewed on the last bites of her second sandwich and swallowed them with the aid of a sip of coffee. "I said I was already feeling better." Another sip of coffee. "Even stale bread and deli meat is appealing when you are starving."

"Now I hear ya, Lieutenant Caulfield. Apparently there was a bit of an obstruction in the voice channel on your end earlier. I trust the communications are fixed no-ouch!" She rubbed her shin, where Max just gave her a playful kick, in mock hurt. "Is this mutiny? On my ship nonetheless?"

"Dork." Max settled further in her seat, cup of coffee in hand warming her insides. Chloe simply gave back a smirk. Oh, Chloe... Trying so hard to hide grief welling up within her. Bury it under jokes and japes... to see it hurt her. It physically hurt her, a needle driven through her temple... and then Max was not there. She soared in the sky, beneath her rows of rolling skyscrapers thrusting high in mounts of concrete. A gentle sun shone down on it. Seattle, she knew: she had seen it up high, once, not from this high or at this angle, but she had. It looked striking, and beautiful in its own way: that damnable city that swallowed her whole and made her abandon Chloe for five years. 

_I should be thankful beyond imagination that she's still my friend. That I still... have her. But at what a cost..._

Yet the city warmed her heart. Their destination. Their hope. Their new home. Away from the destruction of Arcadia Bay, the ghosts on their tail. Somewhere safe. Somewhere good. Somewhere... _wrong._ The realization suddenly hit Max. It wasn't right. _Seattle_ wasn't right. It was like seeing Nathan Prescott. On the outside it was alright, familiar, just as she had seen before... yet something was odd. Wrong. A madness out of her reach. Out of her sight.

Then her invisible wings broke, and she was falling.

"Max!" She became conscious of a hand on her cheek, a leg beneath her head, and a panicked face framed with blue hair. "Come on, SuperMax, say something. Please. _Please._ " A tear that fell down on her cheek. The first tear Chloe shed since the storm.

"I-I had a vision." Max stuttered out. 

She dragged her up into a hug. "Thank God you're okay." Then a pause. "Wait, vision? Please tell me it wasn't-"

"No." Max looked up at Chloe. "Not a storm. Not another. Just Seattle."

"Just Seattle?" Chloe raised an eyebrow. "No storms? No disasters? Just-just Seattle?"

"Seems almost... weird after this week, doesn't it?"

Chloe bit her lower lip. "Well, I know one thing: screw the rest. Saddle up, SuperMax. I'm doped up on caffeine, adrenaline and worry for my best friend, and I'm driving you to Seattle right this second. Complaint denied."

"I didn't even complain!"

"You were going to. Remember the comfy chair?" She waved her fingers. "Powers of best friendship."

"But-"

"No complaints, Max." Chloe smiled faintly. "You put down your head and catch some z's, and don't you dare wake up until we're at Seattle. I'll get us there together. With power of caffeine and adrenaline. And cigarettes."

"You start sounding like David. Ordering me around." Chloe laughed at that, faint, barely there, yet her first laugh since then. It felt like singsong to Max, as faint as it was, it was her laughing. "Yeah. I guess he'd like that, wouldn't he? Chloe Price 2.0, now with military hardassery. Order today for a discount." She drove the truck back into the highway. "You just sleep, Max. See you at Seattle.

She didn't want to, she really didn't, but her body began to refuse her will. Eyelids began to droop, consciousness began to fade. "You know, Chloe... I had always hoped that we could... could do something like this one day. Just hit the road and never look back. You and me. If only..."

"If only in better circumstances?" Chloe grimly shook her head. "If only, Max. If only."

"If only." And sleep took Max Caulfield.

And with it, came the voice of Max. The _Other_ Max.

***

Watching Max slide into a deep sleep, Chloe Elizabeth Price rode on towards Seattle, tears locked until now rolling down her cheeks. To be the cause of so much... At least there was Max. Thank everything there was Max. Worth all the tears she could shed and all the worry she could possess. And though her heart wanted to bring her to Seattle soon, a part of her wanted the road to go on forever, to drive with Max until the ends of the earth. When one was on the road, one could shed her sorrows, and outpace her ghosts. Seattle seemed both a jewel and a honeytrap in the eye of her mind. Where she would have to reach. Where she would have to stop. She would do anything for Max, but to stop... that frightened her now.

When one was on the road, one could outpace her ghosts.

It was when one stopped that they would catch up.


	3. The Palest of Gleams

Matthew Cross had been a search-and-rescue worker for two decades, yet nothing he had ever seen compared to the devastation seen by this town in the arse-end of Oregon. It was as if the fist of an angry god had reached down from the heavens to slam down on the town and left only ruin and rubble behind, and preciously little at that. A town of hundreds, now wiped off the map, only splintered wood and shattered concrete marking its carcass. 

And there were the corpses, too. Lots of broken corpses, with empty stares and pale skin. Haunting. Not one living inhabitant of the town so far. Not one. In his twenty years Matthew had never been part of a search and rescue that found no survivors. Until now. This wasn't search and rescue: they were just searching, and packing up the corpses.

This was fucked up.

It was when a chrome black sedan rolled on towards him that his attention was taken off from his short break, half-finished cigarette, and morbid thoughts. He wandered out into the middle of the road and raised a hand, as the sedan slowly came to a halt, its owner leaving it. "Sir, this zone is restricted for civilians." Matthew called out. "There are search and rescue operations ongoing."

The man smiled as he approached him, a frightening smile on a pair of thin lips, a hungry smile. His skin was pale as if having never seen the sun before, and taut over an elongated, bony skull crowned by a shortly cropped fringe of raven hair. In his immaculate suit he stood tall and lean and hungry, as if... Slenderman with hair and a face. Yes, that comparison fit, and it didn't make Matthew feel good.

"Agent Galloway. John Alexander Galloway." The man spoke, his voice surprisingly gentle as he took out a badge. "Department of Homeland Security."

"Oh sh- sorry, sir." Matthew blurted out. "I didn't know-"

"Irrelevant." Galloway cut in. "You are right, civilians aren't meant to be allowed here. Your dedication to your duty is... admirable, Mr..."

"Cross, sir. Matthew Cross, North Oregon Regional Search and Rescue."

"Walk with me, Mr. Cross, and tell me what happened here." Galloway took off towards the center of the Arcadia Bay without pausing, forcing Matthew to catch up. "What did you find?"

"Well, sir, to speak plainly, it was a freak tornado. Meteorology says it practically formed almost right on top of the town, before utterly razing it. Heard they classified it an EF-6."

Galloway paused for one second. "Cross, there isn't-"

"I know, sir." Matthew cut in, and when he saw the expression on that gaunt face he immediately regretted it. It took much effort to find the will to continue. "There isn't an EF-6 on the tornado scale. I told that to meteorology as well: they insist it wasn't an error."

"So," Galloway took a deep breath, "What you are telling me is that this place was hit by a storm that _broke the scale?_ "

"Exactly, sir, and seeing the damage around us... I cannot say I'm not tempted to think that EF-5 isn't sufficiently fitting this." Matthew took another puff on his cigarette. "There's barely _rubble_ you can find here, a little stronger and there wouldn't even be any indication that Arcadia Bay used to be here. We've managed to recover the remains of more than a thousand dead, and I'm giving you a vague number because most of them are in too many pieces to determine exactly how many are there."

"That's slightly more than half of the population." Galloway remarked matter-of-factly. "Have you found any survivors, or any trace of one?"

"So far? None." Matthew shook his head, another morbid thought filling his mind. "If there are, they have ran away. Or they are buried dying under pulverized concrete."

"I see." Galloway stood silent as they walked down what once used to be a street, now flanked by ruins. Many of them were already dug through, a few still being hopelessly worked on. It took several minutes before the Homeland Security agent spoke again, right after kneeling next to a ruin and picking up a piece of concrete about the size of a walnut. "I heard an arrest took place here shortly before the storm. A photography teacher or something. Care to elaborate?" His voice told Matthew that Galloway required no elaboration: that was a tone that knew everything.

"Mark Jefferson, sir. You may have heard of him, famous photographer. Taught at Blackwell here. Turns out," Matthew kicked a small piece of concrete, "bastard was sick in the head. Kidnapped and drugged schoolgirls and took their photos. Hit the local news already, it'll probably be out on national today. Apparently they dragged him off to Portland shortly before the storm hit." A pained smile appeared in Matthew's lips. "The worst man at the town might be the only one still alive. Fate is a sick bastard." He inhaled one last time from the cigarette, and threw the stub away. 

"That it is, Cross. That it is." Galloway paused for a second, and his gaze turned towards the lighthouse, its top sheared off, still keeping watch over the tomb of Arcadia Bay. A frown took his features. "That lighthouse. Did you find anything there?"

"Was the first place checked by the first team, sir. Thought there could have been someone sheltering there. Found nobody."

Galloway's frown deepened, and he placed a hand on his temple, the other still clutching that piece of concrete. "Let's see what we have there, then. Lead the way, Mr. Cross."

***

"Well, I had been hoping for the better, but this was about what I had been expecting." Galloway threw the piece of concrete in the air, and caught it again. "Your boys churned up this place, Cross."

"Apparently, Agent." Matthew replied, his voice calm. "If you had been hoping for tracks, there clearly aren't any left." Just as right, there weren't. The mud of Friday was churned up by the boots of the rescue workers, effectively clearing any signs of previous human presence that might have been present. "Jackson was with the team that checked it out here, sir. We can ask him if there was any."

"Maybe." Galloway sauntered up to the cliffside. "It must have been quite the picturesque view from up here, in different times." He seemed strangely grim.

"Before a freak of nature found it." Matthew moved up next to the agent. From here the devastation visited on Arcadia Bay looked even more clearly, even more horrifying. "I've been seeing such sights for twenty years... but it never gets easier."

"A freak of nature?" Galloway laughed, so unfitting and chilling on those thin lips, with that voice. "There is no such thing as a freak of nature, Cross. That's what humans call natural things that do not fit how they define nature. Or how they _want_ to define nature, at the least."

His tone made Matthew shiver. There was something dark in that tone, malevolent, abyssal. What was that saying? About the abyss?

"You speak like an expert, sir."

"My purpose is things the likes of you consider aberrations of nature, Cross. After a while, you start to acquire some... understanding."

That lit a fire in his memory. _Stare long into the abyss, and the abyss stares back._

"Stare long into the abyss, and the abyss stares back." Matthew breathed out.

Galloway smiled slightly. " _Wer mit Ungeheuern kämpft, mag zusehn, dass er nicht dabei zum Ungeheuer wird. Und wenn du lange in einen Abgrund blickst, blickt der Abgrund auch in dich hinein._  He who fights with monsters should be careful lest he thereby become a monster. And if thou gaze long into an abyss, the abyss will also gaze into thee. Friedrich Nietzsche." He tossed and caught the piece of concrete again, focused on some distant point. "I was quite fond of some of his words. Some are very... apt."

For a moment, the palest of gleams seemed to flicker around him, and the very sight gripped Matthew's heart with iron fingers. _Wrong._ It was the only word he could think of. The agent was _wrong._

"But then again, don't let me bore you with the ramblings of an old man. Age makes a man prone to chatter." Galloway looked at the ground, a brow raised. "Now, now, what do we have here?" He knelt and rose up with what looked like a torn piece of paper half-buried in dried soil. For a second he kept it in his hands, and Matthew recognized it, seemingly a piece torn off a Polaroid photo. And before he could see what was on it, Galloway brought his arm down and stuffed it in a pocket. "One last thing, Cross: I assure you, you haven't been seeing such sights for twenty years. What you see today is something you have never seen before. If I were you, I'd hope to never see another."

"Sir... what do you mean?"

Galloway sharply turned on his heels, disinterested in answering. "Best get back."

***

It took until their return to the town proper for the Homeland Security agent to speak again. "I am not sure how to feel about this, Cross. As things stand, your 'freak of nature' appears to have covered its tracks remarkably, leaving me without a lead." What sort of lead was he expecting, Matthew wondered. It was a storm. May have been too strong, and weird, but it was a storm nonetheless. Why was the Homeland Security even here? It didn't make sense.

"Anyway, I appreciate your listening." Galloway continued. "It isn't often I get to speak as freely as this. Very rare, in fact. So, thank you. For listening to my ramblings."

"This sounds like the prelude to you shooting me because I now know too much, sir." Matthew couldn't help but crack a joke.

The agent didn't laugh. Instead, he looked at him with a cold, emotionless glare, that made Matthew think he might as well do that. "You know too little to make something of it yet too much to rest easy. It is a situation I can only feel sorry for."

"What was in that photo, sir?" Matthew forced himself to change the subject. "The one you found by the lighthouse."

"That? It's just a torn photograph. Nothing of significance." The tone warned Matthew to not press this line of inquiry, and silence again settled in.

Until Galloway suddenly stopped, a curious frown on his face, and spun around to face a relatively large pile of rubble, his calm, measured demeanor infected with feverish vigor. "Did you dig through this yet?"

"I don't think so, sir, only a rudimentary check to see if anyone's exposed enough to easily get out." Matthew looked around for the nearest work team, ten or so meters away working on another ruin. "Jackson! You dig this one yet?"

"Not yet!" Came the reply from afar. "We'll be there in twenty. Anything wrong?"

Matthew turned around to see Galloway not where he left him, but instead kneeling by the rubble, pale fingers scraping aside pieces of concrete. "Sir," he approached the Homeland Security agent, "I have to ask you to not disturb a site before we can ensure there is no risk of-"

"There is someone in there." Five words cut Matthew off, five words unerringly calm. "Someone alive." Two more words took him aback. 

"Sir, with all due respect you can't know it from up here. There can be someone buried three meters below that and we wouldn't know unti-"

It was the thing he least expected to occur, what Galloway did. The Homeland Security agent rose to his feet, a blue gleam flickering at his fingers. He opened the hand still clutching the piece of concrete he had picked up earlier, on his lips flickering a single word, one inaudible to him. The piece of concrete began to rise, and with it the rubble  _moved._ Like the blanket of a waking giant it rose, tiniest pieces scattered around and the greatest slabs of solid concrete rising as if gravity had ceased to exist. There was a strange serenity in the agent's face shadowed with the same blue gleam, as tons of rubble moved up and aside, piece by piece.

"The God of my rock; in him will I trust." He heard Jackson mutter next to him, when his fellow worker had arrived, Matthew had no idea. "He is my shield, and the horn of my salvation, my high tower, and my refuge, my saviour; thou savest me from violence."

"I will call on the Lord, who is worthy to be praised: so shall I be saved from mine enemies." Matthew continued.

Galloway leapt inside the rubble, what was standing in the air falling aside. "There's someone here."

The rescue workers were on the ruin within a second. There stood the Homeland Security agent kneeling next to a lithe, thin form, that seemed to have had no hope left for him-no, her, Matthew corrected as he moved up to the agent. The description 'broken body' never seemed so fitting until now: her back stood brutally twisted in at least two different places, blood dried around her mouth. A knee was crushed and tendons hammered, and what remained intact of her skin was a mesh of cuts and bruises: cold as well, deathly cold, though miraculously there was the trace of the slightest carotid pulse.

It seemed such a shame. Here stood a teenaged girl, such a life of potential ahead of her: now broken so badly that on the miniscule possibility she survived, she would live the rest of her life as a complete cripple, doomed to be nothing but a burden to her family, if they survived, that is.

Then there again was that blue gleam.

One pale hand laid on her bloodied face, making the almost-dead features look even more terrific with its corpse-pallid light, and the girl twisted. A pair of sickening snaps filled his ears as the spine popped back into place, tendons knit themselves back together before bone melded together and skin covered over the mended knee. The more serious of the cuts faded into nothingness, and the faintest of colours arrived on her still-bruised skin.

With a low growl Galloway lurched back, leaning against the rubble and taking deep breaths. Large beads of sweat had welled up in his brow, and he held up his right hand as if burnt. He was paler now, if such a thing was even possible, and he was tiredly shivering as he rose up to his feet. He looked up at Matthew, and then at the other rescue personnel looking on in abject shock. 

"What are you?" Matthew found himself asking. "What the _hell_  are you?"

A worrying smile flickered on thin lips. "I am what keeps you secure, Cross." Before anyone could react, he picked up the girl as if she weighed nothing, and climbed his way out of the rubble. "As of right now she is in custody as a critical witness."

"You cannot just take away a teenaged girl like that, not a disaster survivor!" He heard Jackson intervene, as he climbed out of the rubble. "She needs care, alright, not custody and interrogation!"

His colleague was right. He couldn't. Things didn't simply work that way in the US. They shouldn't have had.

Galloway turned, the same sick smile in his lips now shadowed by another gleam. Slightly he inclined his head to the side, and murmured. "I can, and I should."

Of course he could! Realization hit Matthew. It was perfectly legal, not merely legal, but also necessary for the safety of the country. The girl had to go with the Homeland Security agent, of course, of course! From their expressions and their nods he could see his friends reach the same realization. The agent turned around to walk, and the workers swiftly returned back to their job, dispersing without so much as the slightest complaint.

Only Matthew followed after the agent, as he made his way back to his car, silent as the girl lied cradled in his arms. He gently placed her in the backseat before closing the door.

"I admire your dedication to your duty, Cross, I truly do." Galloway smiled slightly. "Amongst my kin it is... it was, a much valued virtue. For whatever it means... I'm sorry for doing this."

"For doing... what, sir?" 

Galloway entered his car, and one last sentence came over the sound of the engine. "You won't know." 

Matthew watched the car speed away, and a shudder overtook him. The appearance of that suited man had creeped him out terribly. It was good that he had heeded Matthew's warnings regarding the restrictions for outsiders to enter the disaster site. He had looked like trouble, and the last thing Arcadia Bay, or what remained of it, needed was trouble. But well, he had left just after arriving, and to speculate of what might have happened had no point.

He raised his hand to the mouth, to take one more, sorely needed puff to relax his nerves, then stopped. 

_Where did my cigarette go?_

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> And now things start getting interesting...


	4. Walls of Castle Caulfield

"Storm..." The faintest of murmurs rose from the seat next to her. "Storm... Che-storm. Cliff. We- the light... storm."

_Fuck, she's really not feeling good._ Chloe flung a wave of mental expletives at the situation, looking at Max curled like a baby at the seat next to her. Barely-legible murmurs ran through her lips, accompanied by shudders and shakes. And Chloe had no idea what to do. That alone was almost as bad as seeing her like this.

"Come on, Price. Find a way. You always find a way. Always." The words gave her an urge to laugh the moment they left her lips. Find a way? She? She hadn't found a way to find the slightest trace of Rachel for months. She hadn't found a way to pay Frank back until Max helped her steal from Blackwell. She hadn't even found a way to let go of her father, and instead had poisoned everyone with her hatred. Her mother, hell, even David, both likely dead now.

No. The only thing she found a way for was to get shot in the stomach by that asshole Nathan Prescott in Blackwell's restroom, forcing Max to upend the whole structure of time just to save her. Over and over again. All she found a way for was to force Max to choose between her and the entire Arcadia Bay. She should have chosen the town. It was the logical choice. It was the moral choice. It was the sane choice. There were so many people in that town who deserved life more than a blue-haired punk too selfish to do anything but blame others for her mistakes.

But she had chosen her. She had spat in the face of reason and logic and the life and time and universe and chosen her. She had taken her over _everything._ She had stood and watched as a thousand people died, just for her sake, just to not let her die at her lowest point, bleeding on that damned bathroom floor.

_You are my number one priority now._ Her words rung in her ears. _You are all that matters to me._

She had been at her lowest, her most broken, her weakest, beyond any help anyone could afford her... and then God had sent her an angel. A beautiful, kind, loving angel, a strong, determined angel.

"Oh, Max..." Words almost failed her. "You deserve a better fate. A better friend. A _much_ better friend." But if she was the best Max had... she might as well try being the best she could possibly be.

"Go..." A whisper left Max's lips. "Let... go... please. Kill-killed her. Took me. Please."

Chloe's knuckles turned white as she squeezed the wheel. "She needs rest, Price." She muttered out loud. But this... it was bad. Then a thought lit up in her mind.  _Maybe she is feverish? I mean... that's why it is called fever dream, right?_ She had been soaking wet since the storm, with few chances to dry or warm herself. She could have caught a cold. Her weakness, fatigue, her gazing off into the distance or the nightmares plaguing her... they could just be fever's doings.

"I can't fucking believe I'm hoping my best friend has fever." Chloe shook her head. But here she was doing just that. The alternative was too... terrible to contemplate. Her hand reached for Max's forehead, and a chill ran through her the moment she touched the skin: it was cool, cold, even, not even the barest trace of fiendish fever present. Her heart splintered for a moment: there would be no easy way out of this. She was broken now, horribly scarred, all for Chloe, all because of her. "You destroy everything around you, Price." Then her hand was caught by an iron grip.

There was strength she wouldn't expect in those frail fingers, the desperate grasp of a drowning woman, latching on her hand as if it was the only thing keeping her from the abyss below. "Chloe." Max let out a breath in her sleep, the arm falling to her side even as it held on to her hand for dear life. "Chloe." Her breathing was barely calmer now, her mutterings dying down. "Chloe."

Chloe squeezed her hand ever so slightly. She didn't want to risk her waking up, not when she finally seemed not being plagued by dreams. A warmth ran up her arm, and sleep began to creep within her, to urge her to relinquish her hold on the real world. She shook her head with as much vigor as she could muster. She would get Max home: there were no two ways about it.

***

"Here we are." The ancient engine of the truck rumbled in displeasure as the vehicle came to a halt. Chloe took in a deep breath. "Seattle." She looked right, to Max quietly asleep on the seat, a vaguely peaceful expression on her face, serene, even. The same expression she kept since she calmed down when she caught her hand, which she still held to. It made her hurt to wake her up, not when she was that worn, not when she was that tired. She had postponed it as much as she could, but now they were here, in the last leg of their journey, but someone had to describe her the way to the Caulfield household. With her free hand Chloe reached over, and ruffled her hair slightly. "Rise and shine, Bat-Max." 

Two eyes peered out at her from behind eyelids slightly open. "Chloe? Where-where are we?"

Chloe smiled ever so slightly. "Welcome to the Rain City. Sorry to wake you up, princess, but someone has to show me the way to Castle Caulfield."

"Oh." Max rose and shook her head, rubbing her eyes. "Where are we now... holy shit. It got dark already?" Her gaze snapped to Chloe. "Chloe... how long have you been awake?"

"Does the nap last night count?" Chloe thought back to the hectic events of the last week. "While we waited for my step-father to bust Jefferson? Before that... I think it was Tuesday night."

Max's eyes grew wider as the realization hit. "God, Chloe... you didn't properly sleep since we broke in Blackwell! And you still refused to sit down and rest... just so you could bring me here sooner."

"I had to, Max." Words poured out of her mouth before she could even think. "You were... _bad._ Very bad. I-I couldn't sit down and sleep while you were like that. No fucking way."

"Chloe, I..." Her tone suddenly evolved. "Wait a second... Che, why are we holding hands?"

She couldn't help but chuckle at that. "Well, don't look at me. Sleepy Max kind of decided that she'd rather lay claim to my right hand." She conspirationally leaned in. "Between us, she has a hella solid grip."

"Are you cereal?" Max chuckled as their hands untangled. "How long?"

"Two hours?" Chloe shrugged. "Three, maybe."

"Daamn." Max smiled slightly, that sheepish, puppy eyes smile that made her heart melt. "Sorry about that."

"Well, Sleepy Max definitely didn't appear sorry." Another chuckle as she got the car rolling. "Alright, which way?"

"Just straight ahead from here." Max leaned back in her seat, and the truck moved on, towards the Caulfield household, towards the final stop of this short journey.

Chloe brought the truck to a halt fifteen minutes later, right in front of the Caulfields' house, and leaned back with a weary sigh. "This is it. The great Castle Caulfield."

"The new and ever-standing stronghold of Captain Chloe and her pirates?" Max chuckled slightly. "Ready to conquer a new city."

Chloe left the truck with the faintest of smiles, fixated on the house. "Yeah. For as long as I'll be here, at least."

Max spun around, surprise clear as day in her eyes. "What? What does that even mean? You can't-"

"I can't crash with your parents for my entire life, Max. Sooner or later I have to go. Build myself a life. Maybe hit the road again." _Not to mention you don't need me around ruining your life, Max. You deserve so much better._

"Then we will do it together. Whatever it is."

"Max, you have a home. A family. A life. I cannot drag you with me into my... _uncertain_ future. I can't do this to-"

Before Chloe could even react, the smaller girl was upon her, arms thrown around and face pressed against her shoulder. "Listen, no matter what happens, I will never, _ever,_ abandon you, Chloe. I'll never leave you. I'll always have your back. Always." She slowly pulled back, and looked into her eyes. "You are the best friend anyone could possibly ask for. I will never, I can never, let you go. Never."

Chloe wanted to speak then. As she held her gaze, as  they stood there in the dark, as her cheeks burned with heat and as a realization struck her, she wanted to speak, freer and more honest than she ever did since her father died. To speak and pour her heart out, to admit and ask. But the words choked her, and Max withdrew with a smile.  _Oh, congratulations, Price! You are officially a failure!_

That was when a cold chill hit her. Not the cold of the autumn night, but true cold, the temperature of dread, the tickle on the back of her neck, the sixth sense that would made it known when one was watched. Chloe spun around, facing an alley across the street, and the alley stared back at her. Her eyes saw nothing but the dark, her mind recognized nothing, but deep within her soul _felt_ it, dark and terrible and unhinged, of madness and savagery lurking in the darkest shadows unseen, watching, waiting, starving...

"Chloe?"

Her voice snapped Chloe out of it. Her voice, always so reassuring, always so calming, always touching her frayed nerves. She rushed at the truck, practically diving through the window and opening the glove compartment.  _Fuck, I've left this hella messy. Is it even there, damn it?_ She dragged out a tiny bag of weed, a notebook unused for two years, a pink, girly-ass pencil she was sure she never saw before, and some sort of complicated machine part that looked completely foreign.

"Chloe? What's wrong?"

Her fingers finally found the cold metal, and she crawled back out of the car. "There's something there. I can feel it." She pointed the metal rod and pressed the button, and the powerful beam of the flashlight shone upon the alley.

It was completely deserted.

"There's... nothing." She turned off the light. "I-I was sure-"

A cool hand reached up for her temple. "Chloe, you barely slept since Tuesday night and you have been practically running on overload since then. Maybe it's just..."

"The fatigue talking?" Chloe looked at the alley again, now shrouded in the same shadows without the barest trace of the malevolence she could swear was there just seconds ago. "It-it looks like it. Damn, I don't look good at all, do I?"

"Not at all."

"Called it." Chloe poked her in the arm. "Go on. Don't make them wait any longer.

The doorbell rang, and seconds passed in the dark, until it opened. A disheveled Vanessa Caulfield stood there, eyes red with dried tears now growing wide in shock. "Max?" A hushed whisper left her lips. "Max!" Her mother dragged Max into a big hug before she could even speak. "Ryan! It's Max!" Even where she stood a few steps back, she could hear the lumbering steps from inside the house, and Ryan Caulfield's familiar bulk soon burst out of the door. He was as disheveled as his wife, yet his eyes burned with elation at seeing Max, as he embraced her in what could only be described as a bear hug.

They were such a great family. Such a wonderful family. A family she never got to have since age thirteen, with its last remnant wiped out this very day. Was she doomed to lose it? Was it all doomed to shatter with her father's death? Or was it- was it her fault, unable to move on, pouring on all her hatred on the man who she perceived as trying to replace him? Was it Chloe who destroyed any hope of having a good family? She didn't know. And now she would never get the chance to learn.

_Life is... so not fair._

"Chloe Elizabeth Price." Ryan's voice pulled her from her thoughts. "Stop standing over there."

"I'd hate to intrude in the family moment." Chloe replied, the faintest of smiles forming on her lips.

"Nonsense." Max's father cut her off. "You are family, Chloe, nothing changes that. You are as much my daughter as Max is." She couldn't even say anything before he gave her another bear hug. "Thank God you two are safe. Since we got the news we..." A sigh. "What's past is past, though. Come in." They went in, and from behind them closed the gates of Castle Caulfield, the one safe haven to the two girls.

"I'll prepare you something. You must be very tired, hungry too." Vanessa led them inside the house.

"We ate something on the way, mom." Max smiled slightly. "But we are kind of burnt out, so, better if we go right to sleep. I-I mean, I missed you, but..."

"But, you two are looking as if you haven't slept a minute for the past week. I'm not going to hold you up just so I can chat a few empty words with my daughter, that can wait." Vanessa smiled slightly. "Chloe, I'll prepare the guest room for you, if that's fine." It was rather hard to not notice Max's otherwise barely perceptible frown. "It might not be in pristine condition, but-"

"Actually, don't." Vanessa raised an eyebrow, and Chloe continued, this time in a whisper. "Max... isn't taking it very well, the storm I mean. Not well at all." She took a breath. God, it wasn't exactly easy saying it to her. "I don't want to leave her alone." _I don't want to be alone, either._

Vanessa gave her a knowing smile. "So be it. Up you go, then, Chloe. See you in the morning."

She gave Max a conspirational wink, and together they ascended the stairs.

***

Chloe threw her still slightly wet jacket on a chair, followed by her beanie, shirt and jeans. The bed was calling out to her, sleep was dragging her down. She only partially heeded its will, sitting on it with a sigh. 

"You sure you don't want me to get you something?" A call came from Max, changing into a set of pyjamas. "I do have spare clothing, you know."

"I'm four inches taller than you, Caulfield. Your clothing doesn't fit me. Unless you had a friend a couple years ago who was just my size and who mysteriously disappeared leaving her clothes with you. If so, I hope she had a better end."

"I didn't." Her voice grew a couple degrees colder.

"Fuck, sorry, Max." Chloe lied on her back. "I'm just being fucking... morbid. I shouldn't. I really shouldn't. You have enough on your plate right now."

She sat next to her, quietly. "Chloe, look at you now. For so long you barely slept, barely ate, all for me. You are allowed to be grumpy."

"I'm not, Max. I shouldn't be. That's it with my tongue: it's a barbed son of a bitch that shreds everything. It even shredded my fucking life for five years and... I have no one to blame for that. I blamed everyone about my own faults, hell, even you. I-I shouldn't have. I'm sorry, for what it's worth."

"Chloe." She lied down next to her. "You have nothing to apologize for."

"I do. Fuck, Max, I do have five entire years to apologize for. Even you are here now, like... _that,_ plagued by so much and it is all my fucking fault!"

" _Chloe._ " Her voice was firmer now, a hand on her brow. "I am fine now. Because you are here. Because you are with me. Because the pirates of Arcadia Bay sail together again." A smile flickered in her eyes. "Sleep now. I'm here."

She wanted to complain, to claim otherwise, to talk, but the fatigue was growing impossible to resist, and her eyelids slowly closed.

"Max?" A half-dreamy voice, barely awake.

"I'm here, Che."

"Thank you."

"For what?"

"Everything."

 


	5. Azvad ad Absolum

She stood atop the cliff, by the lighthouse. The wind howled at her ears. The rain slammed down on her face and soaked through her clothes, yet the colossal tornado crawled ever onwards, step by step, feet by feet, approaching the solemn shape of the Arcadia Bay.

She wanted to scream. She raged and struggled and shouted, yet from her mouth came only air, wordless, voiceless, helpless she watched, cold and beaten she watched, broken and regretful she watched. Inching ever closer, inexorably, towards a fate she knew all too well. They would all die, she realized, every single one, and the town would be erased from the map by the wrath of some sick god.

It had to be a dream. This wasn't how it happened. What she lived through. It had to be the sick twist of her mind. But then she heard a horrible crash. Her head snapped up, just in time to see the top of the lighthouse shorn off clean, first teetering on the edge, then falling, falling towards her... if this was a dream, she would wake up now.

Yet she didn't. She felt tons of concrete slam into her, felt every bone break and splinter, every muscle torn to ribbons and mashed to pulp she felt, the most terrific of agonies, and that snap that shattered her world...

Her eyes opened.

It was immaculately white around her, impeccably clean, almost sickeningly so where she lied down on the floor. Nothing but white, as far as the eye could see in all ways. A room that had no end, no obstacles in it, just eye-hurting white. She tried to move, but she couldn't. Her head pounded in agony, her every muscle screamed in protest, and her hands were kept together by a thick band. 

_Where am I? What-what is this place?_

And then came that voice, that familiar voice. "Oh, there you are." He said, even as his footsteps sounded, but he couldn't see him. "You make an absolutely brilliant picture right now."

Her eyes opened.

She found herself in a library, vast, where countless tomes and oddities were heaped on great shelves and where the light at the ceiling barely reached at the bottom, a chamber stretching out farther than she could see. When she walked, and carpets devoured the sounds of her footsteps, and she called out, only to listen as it vanished into echo.

_What is this place?_

She turned around and walked down, examining the shelves as she went. Each row was marked by a brass plaque nailed on mahogany. Kate Marsh. That was what one row of bookshelves were marked with. At her end the row was well-lit, immaculately kept, yet everything grew darker towards the other end and the books and papers became chaotic and scrawled, covered in cobwebs and dust, rotten and falling apart. Kate? What did this place even have to do with her?

Nathan Prescott, was the name that marked the next, and it was the polar opposite: more immaculate, more well-lit, tidier as they went away from her, growing more chaotic as they approached her only to terminate with a page lying in a dark pool of blood somehow standing without being drunk by carpets. _Oh God, blood? Nathan? This is bad. With a capital B._ With a careful touch she took up the page, and barely stopped herself from dropping it again.

HEKILLEDMEHEKILLEDMEHEKILLEDMEHEKILLEDMEHEKILLEDMEHEKILLEDMEHEKILLEDMEHEKILLEDME

This was a nightmare. This definitely was a nightmare, there was no other explanation. She knew what the page meant, of course. It still felt... impossible to believe. _I'm sorry, Nathan. I should have seen it. I should have done more. Somehow._  But would it matter? What would change if she had saved Nathan? The storm... it would take him. Only a different death. But she should have noticed. She should have stopped it still. "Hello?" She spoke as she walked down. "Anyone there?"

A rush of air, a slight whistle. A shadow shifting across the shelves, the faintest of movement, almost imperceptible, blink-and-you'll-miss flickered past the distance. A dark fear rose within her, a primal fear. "W-who is there?" Her voice cracked as she spoke, ruining any illusion of bravery. "Are you there?" Only still silence answered her, silence and air perfectly still, only the sound of her own breathing.

_Azvad ad absolum._ Her ears still heard nothing. The air still remained still. Yet she heard it, ring within her skull, speak within her mind, each whisper producing a dozen echoes and each syllable freezing blood in her veins. _Unar argin absol, memor, ad val'sevian._

"Who is there!" Her cracking voice shattered now. She raised her hands to look at them. They were shaking. She tried to clench her fists, to calm down, yet they were still shaking. "Anyone? What is this place!" But only the shadows answered. "Please." Her shouts turned to a whimper now. "Please."

_Azvad ad absolum, malkavar, ravin interiam. Aren, hal nosferam siul._

The mind-voice droned on, power behind every word, almost as if an incantation straight out of a horror movie. She didn't want to imagine its completion, didn't want to contemplate its purpose. Wood shifted before her eyes, the words etching themselves on it as if branded by fire, crawling across carpets and mahogany. They crept on towards her, slow, yet maleficent in their stride. The words burned her eyes, seared into her mind. Azvad ad absolum. Memor, ad val'sevian, malkavar, ravin interiam. Azvad ad absolum. Azvad ad absolum.

"Keep me, O Lord, from the hands of the wicked." It was a new voice, and a tangible one, coming from every direction yet from none. Her insides warmed as she heard it: it held none of the other's dark malevolence, the sheer sense of wrongness, the ice within every syllable, no. It was kind, sweet, innocent still. "Preserve me from the violent man; who have purposed to overthrow my goings."

"Oh my god." She shivered from head to toe. "Kate? Is that- is that you?" The recital continued, and the words seemed to withdraw, leaving dark stains where they once stood. One day, she would laugh at the though, yet now she was just... glad to hear her. "Kate? Kate!" Where was she? She paused for the briefest of moments. Maybe the row with her name? That would be logical, no?

But Kate Marsh wasn't there, just the same strange shelves undisturbed, and the recital continuing from every direction. "O God the Lord, the strength of my salvation, thou hast covered my head in the day of battle." But the voice seemed stronger now, barely closer in one direction. "Kate!" She shouted and ran, ran faster than she could remember ever doing. "Kate!"

She didn't count how many rows she ran past, not how many dark stains marred mahogany where they once stood. She only ran and ran, and the chant came tantalizingly close, until she was sure she found it. "Kate!" But the row was empty, books and files and photos torn from their shelves as if someone had thrown them wildly until he found nothing else to throw around. Or as if a storm had slammed into the row. A storm.

What row was this? The odd question rose in her mind. If everything here was named after someone, after Kate, after Nathan, then who was this row dedicated to? She took a few steps back, to find and read the plaque. _Max?_ The last name she had expected staring back at her was that: yet the etched words Maxine Caulfield stared at her. And that moment, it was when she realized.

Kate's chant had stopped.

First it was the barest of movements at the opposite end of the row. The thinnest of tendrils crept across the corner, over shredded books and pages, over the carpets and across the shelves and books, even as more came in its wake, wriggling and bounding. A pale hand grasped the corner of the mahogany shelf, and a loping figure came around. It was pale, pale as blighted bone, pale as the shadow of death, lean and tall and gaunt, humanoid yet utterly inhuman, limbs and tendrils growing from its gaunt figure, still crawling over the books and papers.

It turned to look at her, face long and slim, hairless and with elongated bone. Eyeless it was yet it saw her, noseless yet smelled her, mouthless yet spoke to her. _Ravin, memor, ad maleficar._  Blood froze in her veins, muscle ceased to obey as she looked on that face. Even her eyes refused to move. The tendrils raced towards her, and they were on her, thin as wire, cold as death, strong as steel they fixed her in place, as the thing loped towards her.

_Azvad ad absolum._

Her eyes opened.

The surroundings changed again, and the horror looked at her, barely half a meter between their faces, pale and gaunt, hungry and cold. A scream rang in her ears. _Her_ scream. 

"I'm sorry." The face withdrew. "Calm down. I mean you no harm."

The surroundings finally registered in her mind. She was half-sitting half-lying on the backseat of some car, partially wrapped in some sort of blanket, and at the end of her feet stood the horror-no, she corrected, he was merely a man. A gaunt and pale one, a face that seriously creeped her out, but a human nonetheless. Knowing it didn't reassure her, though. Where was she? Kidnapped? Abducted and taken off to somewhere? What would happen to her? Her head hurt, as she struggled to remember.

Then she froze.

The wind. The rain. The cold. And that creak, and that crushing sound, and that snap and the pain flaring up in her body... the air became thin, insufficient, as her lungs labored frantically to breathe, a shiver overtaking her form... it had been real, not there, perhaps, but real, it had been real, it had been real, it had been-

A hand gently pressed her shoulder, and a surprisingly kind voice. "Calm." It felt like an order, and she calmed ever so slightly. "You are safe now. Whatever happened is past."

"W-who are you?" Her voice surprised her. It was so hoarse, so shaken. "Where-" A cough cut her off, racking her body and wrenching her throat.

"My name is John Alexander Galloway." He showed her what seemed like a badge, held between long fingers in his other hand. "Department of Homeland Security. You were dug out of the rubble in Arcadia Bay, unharmed beyond bruises and scratches. We're in Portland now." He handed her a bottle of warm water. "Drink. You must be thirsty, and hungry as well."

For a second she hesitated, but then her parched throat made itself felt, and she nodded weakly, reaching for the bottle and gulping it down. "Slow." The man warned him, placing a hand on the bottle. "Trust me, you won't feel too good if you drink too fast." She heeded the statement, and started to drink in smaller sips until the bottle was empty. "What is your name?" The agent asked. "There was no ID found on you."

"Victoria." She breathed out, her own name sounding foreign to her ears. "Victoria Maribeth Chase."

"Nice to meet you, Victoria." The agent smiled. "Now, I recognize this might be too soon but we need to talk, regarding... what happened."

_What happened._ The two words burnt into her brain. For a second, the howling wind again was at her ears, the shaking walls, and then that snap, that world-breaking snap... she tried to breathe, yet felt no air move in. "I-I have to call my parents." _Please._ Her father would know. He had always known what to do.

Agent Galloway reached for something in the front seat. "Well, your phone is here, but bad news, it's fried. It was probably soaked wet with you down there. Sorry. You can use mine, though."

"Who?" With a few more seconds to think, that cursed question had surfaced, the one who she never wanted to yet so desired to ask. Her voice was hushed, faint, almost a plea. "Who-who died?"

"You're the only known survivor as of now, Victoria. I'm... sorry." He put a hand on her shoulder, again, but she barely felt its presence. _Only known survivor._ Taylor. Courtney. Sweet Kate, after what they had done to her. Hell, even Maxine Caulfield... Victoria felt cold, cold as ice, cold as death, cold as the rain, cold as the touch of that horror. Was this how one was supposed to feel? No tears? Just-just the emptiness?

"Victoria." His voice was serious now. "I'll be honest with you: Officially, I have to get you into secure custody pending testimony." The briefest of pauses. "But I don't think it would be good for you."

"Custody?" Why was she being taken in custody? She wasn't a criminal, was she? Just a survivor... the only survivor. 

"I'll be honest with you. You'll hear this in the news soon enough anyway. Homeland Security is... interested in that storm." The word-switch at the last second was starkly noticeable. "Do you know anything about the Enhanced Fujita scale?"

She tried to recall. It had something to do with winds, that she could remember, but that was about it. "I think it was... a measurement scale?"

"Correct. It's a measurement scale used to assess the strength of a storm based on the damage it causes. This particular one that hit Arcadia Bay was classified by meteorology as EF-6." Seeing the forming question on her face, he continued. "Until that storm hit Arcadia Bay, the EF scale went no further than EF-5."

"You mean- you mean that it-"

"I mean," the agent cut her off, "that you underwent and survived the most powerful tornado ever seen or heard of in the entire history of man. By far. By so far that it broke the storm scale."

"Taylor..." She heard a sniff. "Courtney. Kate, Max... Oh god..." Her hands closed over her face, and sobs racked through her body. "They're all... dead, aren't they? You say- say it. The worst storm in human history." She looked at the agent. "How did I survive?  _Why_ did I survive?"

Why? The question hammered at her skull. She had spent _years_ being the biggest bitch possible to everyone she found. Taylor and Courtney she had driven around like the minions of a slave driver with barely any appreciation shown in return. Juliet had trusted her, and she had used it to wreck both her relationship and her friendship. Kate, she had pushed Kate to throw herself off that god-damned roof! What would have happened if Max wasn't there? She would be a murderer, that was what.

And Max... Max Caulfield who she spent weeks making a hell from the life of, and why? Just because she could! She hadn't even _hated_ her, yet she had done everything nasty she could do because... because she could! And she had been only kind to her in return... and now she was dead, too. Maybe the custody made sense. She did deserve it.

It was the agent's voice that got through to her. "Frankly, I do not think that putting you in custody is an even remotely proper idea at the moment." He seemed staring off into the distance, lost in thought. It took long, silent seconds before he snapped out. "Where do your parents live?"

"Seattle." She doubted she had the strength to say much more. For a few seconds, silence reigned, and the agent's face seemed calm and lost in thought.

"There will be no custody."

Victoria's head snapped up. "W-what do you mean?"

"There will be no custody. You heard me. I'm looking at you and I'm taking the field executive decision that you are not in a condition fit for long-lasting custody. I will take your testimony in the field and then take you to Seattle."Y

"You can do that?" She felt an ounce of cheer. No custody. No being stuffed away somewhere while they prodded away at her with countless questions. Just Seattle. Seattle and her parents.

"Well, I have the authority. I'll be chewed out for doing that, but I have the authority." Agent Galloway shrugged visibly, and turned markedly more serious. "But it has a condition. Rule one, you do whatever I say, as I say. Rule two, you _will_ answer my questions regarding Arcadia on the road. Rule three, you go where I go and stay where I tell you to. You hear me? This one is the most important: don't stray. I'm risking major flak doing this, so don't ruin things for me." The pale man leaned towards her, and again he seemed frightening. "Do we have an agreement?"

"Yes." Victoria leapt at the offer. It was her freedom in exchange of a day of obedience. How bad could it be?"

"Good. Now that's settled." The agent opened the door and stepped outside. "Out now, dear Victoria. The faster I get this errand of mine out of the way, the sooner we get to Seattle." 

Victoria stepped out, into the cool October air, and looked at the sprawling complex before her, squat, wide, blocky and powerful in its lines, imposing, even. "Is this-"

"Multnomah County Inverness Jail." Agent Galloway started his stride. "I've a visit to make."

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Phew. This one took longer and was harder than expected to write. I do like what turned out though, so, enjoy! Do drop a comment if you want to say something, feedback is always appreciated.
> 
> Oh, and disclaimer: I don't own Life is Strange or anything related.


	6. Visage of Horror

First thing Max's brain recognized was a blurry expanse of blue through a barely open eyelid.

For a second, the sight puzzled her. Blue? She hadn't fallen asleep by the lighthouse again, had she? This time it would be even more awkward to explain. Then something shifted against her, and her other eye groggily opened. _Wait, no. That's... hair._

The events of yesterday hit her then. She wasn't in Arcadia. There wasn't Arcadia any more. She was at Seattle, with her parents, and a nearly six foot tall punk curled up next to her. Every muscle still weary, Max lifted herself off the bed. It was her room still, with her photographs on the walls, with her desk, albeit without her laptop this time, with her wardrobe on the far wall, it was _home._ The only home she had left. _That's fucking morbid, Caulfield._  She had half-expected a cutting remark by the other Max. But she seemed missing, maybe having had her fill in the dreams of the night. She wasn't going to tempt fate, though.

Her gaze fell to Chloe still sound asleep next to her. She was curled up, knees drawn to her chest, which was slowly rising and falling in a steady rhythm. She looked... peaceful, serene, even, struck by a strange calm separate from all the horrors of the night. Far calmer, far more at ease than she was when she first fell asleep last night. Chloe... as plagued by nightmares and horrors as she was, yet putting on a strong façade just for her sake. But she had apparently found peace now, at least a trace of it. It looked so... picturesque.

Max leapt out of the bed. Her camera was there, left on her desk yesterday night. She took it and turned towards sleeping Chloe, centering her bullet necklace on the photo-to be... no. Something was missing. She reached out over the bed and opened the curtains, letting the morning sun shine into the room. No. Now there was too much light. She closed them until a sliver remained, cutting a line across Chloe's shoulder and glistening on the brass of her bullet necklace. _Much better. Still not complete though... Oh, I know!_

She rushed back at her desk just long enough to take the doe figurine on it, before placing it against Chloe's chest, next to the bullet necklace. _There. Now you look adorable._ She reached out to flick a strand of blue hair from her face, and brought the camera up to take the shot. No, the angle wasn't perfect. A bit to the right, and kneel slightly... still not perfect. She returned to her desk third time in as many minutes to drag her chair back, and climbed on it. Now it looked better. A bit low...

"Can you please hurry up and take your shot?" Chloe remained unmoving, save for lips that were now curling up in a mischievous smirk. "It's getting difficult to hold the pose."

"What?" Max pressed the button and heard the familiar click. "How long have you been awake?" She shook the photo as it came out of the camera; it was a clear picture, a peaceful one. A serene one.

"For long enough." Chloe rose up from the bed and snatched the photo from her hand. "Holy shit, Max, this one is... _spectacular._  Even for you. Even with that silly figurine involved. Even with me asleep." A smile beamed up on her face. "Can I have this one? I'm keeping this for the rest of my life."

"I had a gorgeous model." Words raced out of her mouth before Max could do as much as blink. Heat flushed her cheeks as she realized what exactly she had said. She was sure she looked as red as a tomato right now, a very red one. _For fuck's sake, Max, you kissed her! Sure, it was a dare, but still, it should take more than this to make you blush!_ "S-sure. It's yours."

Chloe laughed as she saw Max turn red. Not merely a mocking laugh or a playful smirk, no, but genuine mirth, and it sounded like heaven. "Right you did. Price charm strikes again!" A few seconds later, her expression died down, and she rubbed her eyes. "Though I don't feel particularly charming right now."

Max latched on the chance to change the subject for dear life. "You don't look like you slept very well." For all her previously serene appearance there was still fatigue in Chloe's face, weary eyes behind drooping eyelids and slouched shoulders.

"It was... well enough, I suppose." She said, managing to replace her original words with 'well enough' fast enough to avoid a pause, but not enough to make it seamless. 'Least I don't feel like I'm about to fall asleep on my feet. I need some freshening, though. Do I get to crash your shower?" She cracked up a faint smile.

"Of course!" Max cut in. "I'm kind of disappointed you asked. You're at home here. You'll always be." She sat on the bed, next to Chloe. "No matter what. Just like old days."

"Just like old days, eh?" Chloe shook her head. "So much has changed, Max... it's not even remotely like the old days any more, is it? You're here, though. That's all that matters." She smiled slightly, more pained now. "All that matters... I'm being morbid again, aren't I?"

"You're allowed to be." Max put a hand on her leg. "You get to be as morbid as you want after all this." A brief pause, and a very real awareness of the closeness of their contact. "Go now, get a shower. The bathroom's right outside, last door on the corridor. Hurry up, though. I'm next."

Chloe chuckled at that as she rose to her feet. "Good way to say 'you stink'. Don't you worry, girl, I can take it!" She theatrically pretended being shot in the heart, a hand cusping her own chest as she exaggerated a stagger backwards. "Alright, but I'm warning you, I'll be ransacking your wardrobe once I'm back."

"You will? What happened to 'I'm four inches taller than you, Caulfield', huh?" A mischievous smirk formed on Max's lips. "Who told you I'm letting you help yourself to my style?" Max put on her best expression of malevolent arrogance and waited.

"Well, I could sleep in a bra. However, my clothing isn't exactly in the most hygienic situation at the moment, as you see, and what I _can't_ do in a bra is to walk downstairs and have breakfast." There was mischief glinting in her eyes, that gaze familiar from their childhood that made Max knew she would _not_ like the following words. "Of course, if you leave me no choice other than doing so, I'll go do just that..."

"Dork." Max retorted with a smile. "Go take your shower. The doors of Max Caulfield Style Center is open to you... this time." She put on a mask of false dignity. "Future access will be given depending on behaviour."

With a chuckle Chloe walked out of the room, leaving Max alone for exactly five seconds until the door opened again, Chloe's blue head poking inside. "Oh, and Max?"

"Yes?"

"You don't _have_ a style!" 

* * *

 The water felt great.

Max sighed quietly under the warmth, water running through her tangled hair and over her knotted muscle. So like the downpour of the storm, yet so different. Warm where it was cold, caressing where it was flaying, gentle where it was harsh, refreshing where it was... destroying. It felt like a glimpse into heaven, so drastically different from that day Hell came on Arcadia.

She did not want to remember that day. Not today. But alas, that was the one thing shower was incapable of. It could wash away her pain, her fatigue, even her sorrow for a while, but memories still clung to her skin, unwilling to let go, holding with barbed hooks. 

She could not rid herself of the memories. The best she could do would be to learn to live with them. And that she would. She had to. For herself and for Chloe, she would live on. What was lost was lost.

Max turned off the water and walked out of the shower, taking a few seconds to wrap herself and her hair in a towel before walking out of the bathroom. A scent hit her nostrils the moment she did so. _Mmm... is that... bacon?_ Even with such a separation from her family, the scent of Vanessa Caulfield's weekend breakfasts were still recognizable, and mouth-watering.

She returned to her room, to be greeted with the sight of a half-dressed Chloe ransacking her way through her wardrobe, speaking out loud as she went on. "Silly shirt with a deer, cool punk shirt _way_ too small for me, another silly shirt with a deer, shirt with a band I'm sure nobody even heard of, shirt with another silly deer, that shirt I remember from back when I was _fourteen,_ huh, cool pirate shirt, and would you look, yet another shirt with a deer. Oh, hey, Max." She cut off her monologue long enough as Max entered the room. "I'll be quick, girl, two questions, one, do you have anything punk, tw"o, why the fuck do half your shirts have a _deer_ on them?"

"Hey, that's not a deer!" Max retorted with feigned anger. "That's a _doe._ There's a significant difference between these two."

An expression of decidedly false shock made its way to Chloe's face. "Are you serious? Really? Oh deer."

"You did not." Max spoke, putting emphasis on every word. "You did not just say that. Chloe Elizabeth Price, you did _not_ just make that pun."

"I'm pretty sure I just did." Chloe flashed a defusing yet smug smile. "Please tell me you own a sufficiently long shirt. Please. Pretty please."

"Well..." Max leaned against the wall, using her best 'I so enjoy this' voice. "You are holding on to my largest right now."

"Shit." Chloe raised the shirt in her hands, the doe head adorning its front presenting an adorable picture against the blue background. "This one is my best option?" Seeing Max only nod in confirmation, she shook her head. "Oh deer."

"Dork."

"Guilty as charged." Chloe smirked as she put on the shirt, leaving a sliver of her midriff bare. "Well, could be worse. Size-wise, at least. I'm decidedly _less_ neutral about the deer."

"Doe." Max gave a sharp reply.

"Looks like deer to me."

"Now you are just doing it to prod me."

Chloe laughed slightly. "I think I am. Come on, suit up, Bat-Max. My nose is calling me downstairs."

 

* * *

 

 

"And here I was about to call you." Her mother shouted out from her position by the stove. "Thought you'd miss the breakfast."

Max rushed over to her mother and gave her a glomp. "I'd _never_ miss your breakfast, mom. No way." She hugged her close. Her family was here. She was here. She was out of Arcadia; out of the storm; this was the moment of clear realization. Nothing bad would happen now. She was safe. They were safe.

"Great to see you too, Max." Her mother sniffed slightly. "I was so worried... so panicked when I heard. Thank God you're alright. You and Chloe both. It's... beyond words how relieved I was last night." A few calm seconds passed, mother and daughter just standing there, until Vanessa Caulfield spoke again. "Um, Max, I really appreciate the show of affection but if you don't let me go we'll be eating our bacon and eggs burnt black."

"Sorry." Max withdrew from the hug. "Chloe and I will set the table, then."

"Well, it's sure appreciated to have two adorable helpers." She took a moment to smile at the girls, before adding in a louder voice. "Unlike that unhelpful oaf reading his newspaper on the couch!"

A peal of mirth from Ryan Caulfield filled the entire house. "Message received, dear. I'll be right over. Almost done, anyway." The sound of a newspaper page being turned was audible amongst the clatter of cutlery as Max focused herself on her newly-taken task. There was a sense of newly-found normalcy in the so-simple act of setting a table, one that anchored her to here and now. _It's just as if... nothing ever happened._

"Jesus Christ!" A bellowing exclamation from her father cut through the air, through the clack of cutlery and the sizzling of bacon. "That's... shit, what sort of madness is this?"

"Language, dear!" Vanessa kindly warned her husband. "We have a pair of impressionable young ladies present." Max felt like chuckling. Impressionable? Chloe? She'd have a more extensive swear vocabulary than the three of them combined.

"I know, it's just... there are no kind words for this, love. None. This crap is just... _horrific._ "

"Dad? You alright?" Max popped out of the kitchen, Chloe on her heels. Her father was there, seated on the couch, newspaper held lightly in his hands. His eyes were staring darkly at the wall. "What's wrong?"

"I'm fine, I'm fine, Max. Just that... I really shouldn't have read this before breakfast, right? Three people were murdered last night in three different places. Worse, all are in Seattle." He looked at the newspaper again. "Butchered might be the better word, though."

Chloe's common sense visibly clashed with her curiosity. Max would bet that it would take five seconds for her curiosity to win. It took three, and she began to walk towards Max's father, to take a look at the newspaper. Her complexion turned pallid as she looked. "What. The. Fuck. Are those his... guts? _There?_ " Chloe shivered visibly. "What sort of sick fucker does this?"

"That sort, I guess." Ryan stood up and folded the newspaper. Better not spoil our appetite any more."

As the breakfast appeared on the table, Max rapidly felt grateful for not having looked at the newspaper. The smell of bacon and eggs... best not to lose one's appetite. On the other hand, the last thing Chloe seemed to be was someone who lost her appetite, Max remarked on as she watched her friend stuff a fork-full into her mouth, and chew it as if a gourmet.

"Vanessa, I swear, you _still_ make one hell of a breakfast." The blue-head went on, still chewing. "I mean, Jo-my mother was epic in this and all that, but you do measure up. Honest."

Her mother chuckled at that. "It's nice to know I can almost match an actual cook. Nicer to know I can still treat you one after so long." She put a hand on the girl's shoulder. "I'm sure she's all right, Chloe. That's Joyce Price we talk about. Not even a storm deters her."

"I know." Chloe nodded. "She'll crawl out of the rubble and walk to Seattle to chew my ass out about David. That's definitely mother."

"We can talk further about what happened later, when they are more comfortable." Her father cut in, his attention divided between the table and the morning news program on the TV. Her father and his morning news obsession... "For now, I'm just glad you are here and safe, you're home. That includes you too, Chloe. You are a daughter of mine, and this is a home of yours. Do not for a second think otherwise."

Chloe smiled at that, a genuine smile, even if pained. Max gave her a prod under the table, and their eyes met. _See?_ Max wanted to say. _We're together now, Che. We belong together._

"And it is no use being gloomy, is it?" Her father continued. "Sorrow brings us no avail, so, let us eat, drink, and be merry!"

With that, the conversation moved on to simpler things. Happier things. To memories of a better time and to hopes of a happy future. They ate and they talked, with the empty drone of the TV in the background, to which no one but her father gave heed. Every once in a while her mother playfully scolded him for it, and he paused long enough to mutter an apology before continuing anyway.

It was just like before that cursed week, just like her many breakfasts with her family, Chloe being the only difference. It was... good.

Until an elbow dug into her side, and snapped Max free from her conversation with her mother.

"Max." Chloe gasped, tense in a fight-or-flight stance, leaning forward like an agitated cat. Her gaze was fixated on the TV, mouth agape, horror palpable in her voice. Next to her sat Max's father, staring at the same screen in visible disgust.

The face of the reporter was there, visibly disturbed, yet to it Max paid no heed. Her words droned out, but to Max they became white noise. The header flashed on the screen, 'Mysterious Murder in Oregon Jail', yet to Max it meant nothing. But the face stood there, and that face burned itself into Max's eyes and seared itself in her mind.

The face, once definitely handsome, was now a horror. It stood gaunt and sunken, hollow and shriveled as if deprived of all moisture and life, on wrinkled lips an expression of incomprehensible agony frozen in death. But it was the dead eyes that had a stare she would never forget, on a face she would never forget, for they contained nothing but complete emptiness, the darkest, the most empty of voids, bereft of _anything_ lurking inside.

"Oh my God." Max gasped, desperately grasping on to Chloe. "Oh my God. C-Chloe, that's... is that-"

"Yes." Chloe spoke with the very same horror in her voice, every word eliciting another shiver. "Jefferson."

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Phew. It took much longer than usual(or expected) to get this one out. It's done though, even with me being busy and procrastinating hard(blame my computer). In Her Wake is back, though, for all who is interested. Feel free to drop a comment about your opinions; constructive criticism is always appreciated. Have fun!


	7. I Told You to Not Stray

Victoria kept watching the Seattle night from the window. It seemed peaceful now, quiet, an island of solitude. Few people wandered the streets at this hour. Almost... too few? _It's awfully empty in the streets now..._

As expected, the agent sniffed out her worry. "You seem tense like a magazine spring. Are you alright?" A slight, reassuring smile flickered on his features. "We're almost there."

"I-I'm fine. Thank you." She stuttered out. "Just that... I feel kind of ominous. Like... like I should run away. Run away and run and run... and never come back."

"I understand." He seemed to gaze off into the distance. "When you walk out of the rubble and realize you are the only one alive... the ruin becomes horror for you. You do not want to think about it. See it. You just want to run, and run, and run. Keep running, so that it never catches up to you. That's how being the sole survivor feels like, Victoria." He took in a deep breath. "I know that all too well. And here I spent the whole day making you relive it over and over. For what it's worth, I wish I did not have to do it."

"I... I understand." She droned on. "It's your job, after all. And... you kept me from custody. I didn't thank you for that, did I? Thanks."

"It was the least I could do. And I had to do it. Even after all I have seen... I have to adhere to my code. Or I will have no purpose, no reason. I might as well not have survived back then if I do not follow what I was meant to." He continued, his voice forcedly stern. "I see the ghosts watch me in the dark, judge me with hollow eyes and empty mouths. And I have to remember them still."

"What happened?" Galloway turned at her with a burning gaze, and for a moment she regretted her decision to continue. "You-you said you walked out of a ruin. That you knew how to be the sole survivor. How-how did that happen?"

His gaze lingered on her for a few, painfully long minutes, only to leave again. "You do not want to know, kid. You are much better off not knowing it." A quick laugh interjected itself between sentences. "There are things no one should know."

_You know... I wonder what the fuck our government is secretly up to when you talk like that._  For all the image of world-weary but kind image he tried to present, Galloway always reminded her of some freak from Area 51 doing all sort of illegal secret shit under the auspices of the federal government.

He... wasn't reassuring. In fact, it felt downright ominous now. Every minute passing silent, every minute spent watching empty streets... it felt darker, more primal, more insane in their desolation. Even more threatening with the pale terror next to her. 

The darkness brought back images of her nightmare, of that aberrant horror of pale tendrils, skittering over long, spindly limbs among the ruins of an accursed library, and a dark shiver ran down her.

The car came to a screeching halt.

"What's wrong?" Victoria snapped to reality from her dark thoughts. First she glanced at Galloway, then outside. "I see nothing."

"Exactly." The agent breathed out slowly. "When did you last see someone out on the streets?"

"I... not sure. Wasn't paying attention."

"Very long ago, Victoria. Very long ago." 

Her gaze turned outside. Barely kept away by dim light of a few street lamps was an oppressive darkness, coalescing into something almost solid... and far amongst it, lurked something. Within her skull she felt it. Dark and terrible and unhinged, of madness and savagery, watching, waiting, starving... _Maniae._  An unknown voice whispered in her head, with strange, confusing clarity. A singular thought. _Maniae._ And then it vanished, dashing off into an alley.

The agent too saw it.

Victoria had seen John Galloway always in serious mode. She doubted he even had the capacity to not be serious. But now, in that moment, before her eyes he entered a completely different state. His stance turned leaner, eyes hungrier, every muscle tensed like a predator in ambush, or a cornered animal. It was hard to make the distinction from here. But he was _far_ more serious when he turned towards her, far more vicious, even slightly... afraid?

"Do you know how to use a gun?"

_What?_ It took her aback. When she saw the agent's lips part, that was possibly the question she expected least. "I-I don't think so. I never used one." That was an understatement. She had never even held one, much less using it. She never had the interest to, and even if she had, her mother would throw a colossal fit at the mere mention of it. 

"Brilliant." The sarcasm was sharp as knife. "Of all the people in the town I had to find the hippie." Before Victoria could even react, he unholstered his service pistol, compact, sleek and black. Just the sort that would fit the image of a special agent... though she had no idea at all what that gun was. "Consider it like a camera, point and shoot." He emphasized that by forming his hand as if holding an imaginary gun and pulling the trigger. "Bang. Do it well and you are rewarded by a pretty picture." He seemed to have a smile saying that, one that made her whole body shiver in fear.

"One: do not put your finger on the trigger until and unless you intend to shoot. Two, do not point it at anything you do not want to shoot. Three, hold it solid with both hands, it has a kick. Four, if you have to use it, _do not hesitate._ " He looked at her. "Understood?"

"Why?" Victoria cut in. "Why are you even tell-"

" _Understood?_ " The agent repeated, underlining the word with a vicious tone. His eyes captured and held hers, and in those eyes Victoria saw danger, a natural, primitive, innate malice. Faced with that, she could only give a shaky nod.

"Good." The agent withdrew, and the sense of danger tickling at the base of her skull eased ever so slightly. "You've graduated from Galloway Emergency Gun Safety Course. Congratulations. Here's your reward." He extended a hand, and she noted with cold dread that it was holding the pistol, now turned around and held by the barrel. With his other hand he reached out and flicked off a switch on its side. "Take it."

Why the fuck was he giving her a gun? No, why the fuck was he giving her _his_ gun? She instinctively shied away from the gun. It was the most unnoticeable of shifts, barely perceptible, yet the agent noticed. "Take it, Victoria. Now. Remember Rule One." He smirked slightly. "It won't bite."

"Why?" She asked, but she took the weapon anyway, as if it could kill her of its own volition. "Why are you giving me this?" A shiver ran up her arm holding the weapon, and dissipated within her chest. She felt... different, somehow.

"I'd rather not return to your bloody corpse." The agent opened the door. "Wait for me. Stay in the car, keep the windows closed and the gun ready, be ready to shoot. If it attacks, shoot it. If it tries to enter the car, shoot it." He paused for a second. "If it is not human, empty the bloody magazine on it."

_If it is not human? What-what do you mean 'not human'?_ The snap of the door closing interrupted Victoria's train of thought. She poked her head out through the window. "Wait!" She called out after him. "You need a gun! It's your weapon!"

"I have no use for a gun." His last audible words were this sentence, and then he vanished into the alley.

"Fucking great." She muttered under her breath. "Of all the people in the world, it had to be you. Next time could you please be a bit less cryptic?" She thickened her voice in a crude impression of the agent. "Stare into the abyss and the abyss stares back, Victoria. Take the gun, Victoria. If it isn't human kill it, Victoria. That's how being the sole survivor feels like, Victoria. I told you to not stray, Victoria." The last sentence left her lips before she even noticed it, and froze in her veins as she realized what she had just said.

_Where did that come from?_ "I told you to not stray, Victoria." She repeated, slowly, pressing on every syllable. "I told you to not stray, Victoria." Galloway had never spoken that sentence to her. She was sure he never said that. But it was there still, scratching at the back of her head, a needlepoint-tiny feeling itching in her. A sentence never heard. "I told you to not stray, Victoria. Now where did I hear this?"

_I told you to not stray, Victoria._

A scream hit her. It was from afar, but it was audible and clear nonetheless, and filled with terror. The scream of a man who had his world break on himself. Victoria looked around, gaze snapping from place to place. Was she... alone? In all ways there was nobody at all as far as the eye could go, nobody. Nothing. Not even dogs or stray cats, not even birds. That knot of unease in her stomach tightened painfully.

The same scream. Closer now, and even more full of fear. _You are overly thinking things, Victoria._ She took in a deep breath, and then another. _Someone's getting mugged or something, maybe, and it's the dead of night! Of course it would be empty... of course nobody is around._

Right?

A shadow burst from a distant alley, hobbling across the concrete in hazy, unbalanced steps. He came under a street light twenty meters away that finally illuminated him, dressed in a black, disheveled suit with panic etched on his features. As he entered the halo of light he seemed to calm down for the slightest of moments. His head snapped in all directions before resting on the agent's car, and finding Victoria inside.

She could feel his gaze even from this distance, wild and deprived of focus, more befitting a panicked animal than a human being. Their eyes met, and the man stood still for a few seconds, before resuming his stride. This time slower, more unbalanced, and _towards her_. He hobbled across the concrete. Ten meters left. Eight. Five. His walk grew even slower, as if he struggled to even stay up. Two meters. Mad eyes touched hers, alight with a broken plea. Psychotic shivers racked through him. A hand reached towards her, wildly shaking. And he fell to the ground.

With the aid of curiosity, her humane side won over cold common sense and she opened a window. "Sir? Are you alright? Sir!"

The only replying sound was an inaudible mumble, covered almost entirely by a racking cough and choking sounds. The rattle of a dying man. A sound she never before heard, yet knew with instinct.

Victoria Chase would have shut the window and turned her ears deaf.

But that Victoria was dead in the ruins of Arcadia Bay, and enough people had died this week.

Victoria opened the door, and dashed outside. The man was writhing on the ground, fingers clawing at the concrete. He was dressed in a suit, once a sharp fit no doubt, now disheveled. He was middle-aged, with receding gray hair and some pudginess in his lines. It was the stereotypical working class father, working a nine-to-five job, with a wife and a couple children somewhere. "Sir?" She tried to recall what she knew from the time she used to take a first aid class. Victoria took hold of the man's shoulder and tried to turn him over.

His eyes snapped open, deranged and wild. A strange vigor infected the dying man, and an iron grip clutched on her collar. "It sleeps..." The man mumbled. "It sleeps... no more."

"Calm down." Victoria tried to reassure him. "I'll call 911. It'll be better. Please calm-"

"IT SLEEPS NO MORE!" The madman shouted on top of his lungs. "It walks the streets, clothed in flesh and skin! It whispers in the night, scratches at the skull. It sleeps no more. It is awake. It is hungry. It is hungry." His eyes darted wildly around in abject panic. "It will find me."

"Who?" Curiosity overtook her. "Who sleeps no more? Who is hungry?"

All strength seemed to vanish from his limbs. Frail hands let go of her collar. "The Child." To say so seemed to ease him, calm him. "The Child of Discord." His hand fell to his side. A loud, gasping breath left his lips. Mad, twitching eyes closed.

And then they opened. And they were changed.

The spark of battered humanity had vanished from them, the fear and fatigue gone, and now they burned with a fever. From between snarling lips and bared teeth rose an animal growl. The man lunged towards her, rising with newfound vigor, fingers narrowly missing her collar as Victoria recoiled back. "Get away from me!"

The madman leapt on her, an incoherent snarl on his lips. He slammed into her with his full weight and the two fell on the ground, her every bone jarring with the impact and her lungs emptying in a fraction of a second as her back connected with the concrete. He smiled at her, utterly deranged. A fist rose, ready to come down.

"Get the fuck away from me, psycho!"

A gun exploded. Then again, again, and again. The fist fell limp. The snarl turned to shock. She acutely felt the weight on top of her for a second, even as she half-thinkingly heaved him aside.

Her left hand was clenched tightly around the hilt of a pistol, white knuckles contrasting with black plastic and droplets of scarlet. Scarlet stains burned on her clothing. 

Her fingers opened in revulsion, and the pistol clattered on the concrete. Victoria fell on her knees. She had killed a man. She was sure she hadn't taken the gun with her. She was sure she did not even have it in her hand until that bullet fired. She could bet her life on that... could she? She had killed a man. There were no excuses for that, she had killed a man.

Bile rose up in her throat, and she retched, hands clenched around her stomach, shaking wildly. Victoria Maribeth Chase... she had been a murderer. The face burned into her retina, half-frozen in shock, eyes closed, mouth slightly agape, lying on the concrete with blood pooling underneath. Her vision became blurry, and muscles weak.

Half-aware, she wiped her eyes.

The corpse looked at her.

With eyelids now open, with the same madness in his eyes, the corpse looked at her, and its moved.

Victoria leapt to her feet and ran. She ran down alleys and around corners, into a labyrinthine web. Behind her the madman ran, hobbling and stumbling, yes, but still ferally fast and seemingly unaware of the blood gushing from his stomach. Incoherent mumbles and shouts rang in night air among his ragged, slavering breath. With the footsteps inching ever closer Victoria ran, shouting for help, yet no one seemed to hear.

She had killed a man. But he had lived. How? _How?_

Her pleas went unanswered, her calls for help unheard as the man that should have died hounded her heels. _I don't want to die! I-you can't die, Victoria, you can't! Just. Keep. Runn-_

So fixated on her flight, Victoria never had a chance to notice the dark shape darting right in front of her from a side alley. It was too near to stop, even to dart aside: she barely saw the figure before she was almost on top of it.

Instead of the teeth-jarring impact she subconsciously expected, she felt an arm. An arm wrapped around her back and pale fingers grasped her shoulder, pulling her aside and towards the shadow with her own momentum. The figure's other hand rose, towards the runner, and muttered a word. It was a foreign word, alien to her, yet the voice was not: beyond all doubt it was Agent Galloway.

And the corpse was shredded.

For the barest of seconds a pale gleam ran down Galloway's arm, and the corpse fell in smalll pieces as if it had sprinted straight into a web of razor wire, or sliced by a hundred knives. Neatly severed human pieces fell on the floor, shredded guts and torn organs painting the ground wet. She saw that sight only for the barest moment before the arm turned her around, but it was enough for it to be branded in her mind.

Galloway's face appeared in her blurry vision. "Victoria? Are you alright?" There was even a sliver of... worry in that tone? "Are you hurt?"

"I-I killed someone." Words choked on her throat, tears welled up in her eyes. "I tho-thought I did." She looked up into the agent's cold eyes. "He did not die. He did not die. I shot him, again and again... I killed him, but he did not die."

Galloway smiled in understanding. "Welcome to the real world, Victoria. The world is... _bizarre_." Then the smile vanished, replaced by cold seriousness. "Get back to the car. Lock yourself in. Don't pop out." He spun ninety degrees on his heels to face a side alley. In the pitch darkness two eyes burned, hypnotically waving to the sides. It looked into her and she understood: it was hungry.

"What-" Her words were cut off as Galloway shoved her lightly. "Go!" He brought his arm up, his fist clenched, and that pale gleam burned again.

And Victoria ran.

She ran until she saw the black Sedan waiting where it was, a blood trail coming from it. She picked up the pistol, and threw herself inside the car. She didn't dare breathe out loud until the doors were locked.

_I told you to not stray, Victoria._ The same sentence again wormed into her mind, the sentence that was never spoken. Could it be... intuition appearing as the agent's words? Reminding her of her mistake that tried to help a dying man?

She began to laugh, first as a chuckle, then full-blown mirth. Old Victoria would scorn everyone, use everyone, and that brought her nothing. And when she tried to change, be... better, she almost first became a murderer, and then dead. She ruined everything she touched. "You fucking suck, Victoria."

For minutes, she did nothing else. Nothing until her gaze caught the agent stagger from the alleyway. There was a fatigue in his slow stride, a hunger in his eyes, a worry in his stance as he walked over to his car. Long, pale fingers knocked on the window, and motioned her to open it.

"Do you know how to drive?" The first words out of his mouth was an unexpected question.

"Why? I-I mean, I can drive, but why?" The similarity to the question that started it all did not elude her. _Do you know how to use a gun?_

"Good." He walked over to the trunk and opened it, returning seconds later with a large, black duffel bag slung across his shoulder. A hand dug around in his pocket, and came out with a key. Galloway tossed it inside. "Take the car. Drive to your family. Do not stop for anything on the road, and under no circumstances tell what happened today to _anyone._ "

"What? Where are you going?" 

"To hunt. I have things to get to the bottom of." The voice was ominous, and he paused for a couple seconds. "A hint, though: you may want to think about skipping town."

"Skipping town? Why? Why did the man not die? What was that thing in the alley? Fucking tell me!" The agent did not heed her words, though, as he simply walked away. "Wait! Isn't this federal property? The gun as well?" That stopped him. He made a half-turn, and gave her a single nod. Seeing Galloway nod, she continued. "How do you give them away to me? What will I even do with them?

The agent shrugged. "Keep them. If things go as planned, I'll return for them."

"And if they don't?"

"If they don't, illegal possession of federal property will be the _least_ of your concerns."

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> And after another loooong wait, In Her Wake is back in action, with a longer chapter than usual! Seriously though, I procrastinate way too much for comfort. Should solve that. 
> 
> In any case... the setup is in its last phases. Now is where things begin getting truly interesting. Poor Victoria, though. She is already bad enough and then there's Galloway messing her up. Oh well, chalk that one up to my cruelty, and see you on a (hopefully sooner) next chapter!
> 
> As always, do drop a comment if you have something to say. I really hate keeping saying this, feels like begging, but I greatly value them. Enjoy!
> 
> Disclaimer: I do not own Life is Strange and its characters.


	8. All Roads Lead to Seattle

"Max, I'm..." Chloe choked on unspoken words. What was she? Sorry? Would that even change anything? Would it bring anyone back? Would it stop a single tear? Would it even...

Chloe had been gone for no more than five minutes. Just to light a cigarette and return, and she had found Max in tears, curled up before a laptop, open on it a single news article. _Freak Storm Razes Oregon Town._ Attached was a list of known casualties.

She held on to Max as she quietly scrolled down the list, tears pouring out of her eyes in a continuous stream. Four hundred and twenty-seven names, so many of them familiar. Justin Williams. Dana Ward. Daniel DaCosta. Juliet Watson. Taylor Christensen. Trevor Yard. Hayden Jones. Brooke Scott. Raymond Wells. Alyssa Anderson. _Warren Graham._

That one had particularly chilled her insides. Warren Graham. One of the very few people in Arcadia Bay she actually felt anything for. One of the very few people that she actually considered a friend, even though he could've been a bit annoying at times and even though it made her feel a strange pang of _something_ thinking the two together, she had come to consider Warren a friend still in those few cursed days.

For a short while, after they made it to Seattle, she had dared to hope Max had a sanctuary. When she stood in a corner and watched Max reunite with her parents already panicking, she had dared to hope that maybe she would be happy now. She had even felt slightly happy when Ryan Caulfield practically dragged her into the family hug. It was a good family. A great family. One she last had when she was thirteen.

Yet it wasn't whole now. It had a deteriorating wreck for a daughter. It was hurting Ryan. It was hurting Vanessa. And all bloody because of her.

And so she sat there, holding on to Max as seconds became minutes and she cried her heart out, fully shedding the tears growing inside her for days. That two words, Warren Graham, had been the hammer to break down the dams in her tear ducts. 

It tore her heart apart just to see it.

She had to do something. _Anything,_ to take her mind off the morbidity of so many deaths and to make her smile, even for the barest moment, but smile still.

The idea came not long after she calmed down, still tearful, still sorrowful, but calmer still.

"I have an idea." She hugged her tighter. "I'll be right back. Just wait."

Max's head rose up, eyes asking questions, and Chloe forced back her own tears. "Don't worry. I'll be right back and it'll be hella-wesome."

That pun elicited the most momentary of chuckles, and that gave her all the strength she could ever need. 

* * *

Vanessa Caulfield was there when she went downstairs.

The older woman had a serenity around her, an old, sagely wisdom that evoked the image that she knew everything before it was even spoken. Her head rose up from her book when she heard Chloe's footsteps. "Chloe." A flash of eyes to the stairway behind. "I heard... how is Max?"

"She is... not good. So not good." Chloe shook her head. "She isn't taking it well. Thinks-thinks it's her fault."

"As if there was any possible way she could've done anything." Vanessa's lips curled in a pained smile, unaware of the irony of her words. "That's still Max, though. Always thinking everything is her fault. You know how she reacted when we first moved from Arcadia? It had nothing at all to do with her, yet it took two months until she stopped blaming herself."

Vanessa paused for a few, long seconds, Chloe lacking words to speak. "When Max first learned she'd won a scholarship at Blackwell, I remember I had felt ominous. As if she really shouldn't go there. Call it maternal instincts. I wouldn't stop her, I-I couldn't. How... giddy she was with excitement. But I thought, if only she didn't go." She shook her head. "At the moment I'd thought it the panic of a mother who knew she'd miss her daughter. And now look what happened. The teacher she idolized turned out to be a pervert, and the town that was her first home went to oblivion. I'd thought, privately, that Arcadia would not be good for her, and I was right."

"Vanessa, I-"

Max's mother raised a finger, and that tiny gesture silenced Chloe. "So, you can imagine how I felt when I heard about the storm. Here, I thought. You were right, Vanessa. Yet you did nothing, and it cost you your sweet daughter. It-it took a lot of willpower to not throw myself off the roof or something." Another long pause. "So, you can also imagine how I felt when I saw you two at the door. My Max returned to me, and with the Prices' daughter in tow. No, scratch that." She chuckled slightly. "The Prices' daughter came to me, with my Max in tow. After all, that's your truck."

"I had to. It was the least I could do after everything she's been through." _Everything she's done for me._

"Which brings us to the fun part." She scanned her head to toe with those piercing eyes. "You've... changed, Chloe. A lot. Considering what you went through, it is understandable, yes, but that punk attitude, the hair... that's the sort of thing that would normally make a mother's instincts trigger, thinking 'She is _bad_ influence on my daughter!' Yet here I am, and I'm... grateful you are here."

For all the love shown by the Caulfield family to her, hearing that out loud still struck like a punch in the gut, not painful but no less paralyzing. "Thank- I mean, thank you."

"No. Thank _you._ For being here. Because now she is healing. She doesn't look like she does, I know, but she is healing nonetheless and your presence here is helping. I can feel it. You two always had that special bond, you know what I mean? Even years later you still have it and it is helping. Hell, you even help _me._ It reminds me of the better old days when I see the two of you around." She smiled kindly. "My point being, for all the horror I felt, that bay put the two of you together and brought you back. That's some good in the whole mess, at least."

_If only you knew, Vanessa. If only you knew what she went through._ "Yeah." She didn't say more. It felt like it'd be lying.

"So... anything I can do for you?" Max's mother broke the silence. "I think you could use something. A distraction, at least."

"I had a question, actually."

Vanessa raised an eyebrow as she heard Chloe talk.

"If, for some reason, someone had to find a _really_ old movie in Seattle, where would she go?

* * *

Chloe knew these sort of thugs. Crude, cowardly, and incompetent, they were brutal and ruthless to all, as long as they had nothing to fear. As long as their prey was soft, weak, unable to break their spine, they would be cruel and courageous. When they met someone who would and could strike back, they'd run with their heels at their buttcheeks.

The big problem was that to the four idiots surrounding her, she was very much the weak prey.

"The bitch punched me." Idiot number one placed a hand on his jaw, surprise evident in his tone. "The fucking bitch punched me."

Chloe wasn't sure what she regretted more, that she didn't pay more attention and practiced harder when Frank taught her that knockout punch of his, or that she decided to actually go for it. In theory, it seemed like the best option: hit fast and hard while nobody expected it, and trust in the power of the sudden knockout to intimidate the rest at least long enough to hightail it the _hell_ out of there. A great plan, until she messed up the sucker punch.

"The bitch punched me!" The thug's voice turned to anger as he stepped towards Chloe. If only she had her gun. Then it'd all be over. But her gun was in her truck's glove compartment right outside the alley, tantalizingly close yet so far, and as usual Chloe Elizabeth Price had gotten herself in trouble. Again.

Every instinct within _screamed_ at her to flee, to run as fast and as far as she could, but her reason locked her in place. She had no avenue of escape, and the moment she let the painfully thin veil of badassitude she'd be finished through and through.

_Price, play this cool or you are finished._

The four tightened the circle around her, their leader staring at her in abject shock. She could hear their brains whirr on overload trying  to determine what gave the girl this boost of courage _. I guess it'd be too much to expect them to spontaneously haemorrhage._

The thug leaned into her, and a mouthful of stinky breath hit her nostrils. "Do you have any idea what we're going to do, bitch?"

She did, as a matter of fact, she had a perfectly good idea of what they were thinking of doing. For the briefest of seconds, a dead face superimposed itself over the thug's crude features. Younger, with that creepy, mad smile. Nathan bloody Prescott, that exact blurry image of him through drug-addled eyes, burnt black into her memory from that day she was lying on his floor drugged out of her mind.

Something snapped within her.

Deep within her chest spread a dark serenity. Haunted and haunting, black as the void, an utter calmness that devoured joy and agony, elation and hatred, respect and pain. Only an absolute, unbroken and immovable serenity, where all things began and all things returned.

A blanket seemed to fall over her vision, no, one lifted over it, and the face in front of her changed. What once was healthy and full of malice turned to deathly torpor, maggots crawling in empty eye sockets, gray skin stretched over a skull, blood turned brown splattered around the head half of which was sheared off by an axe.

Her lips parted and from them came a voice, a voice that was hers yet not hers, that was human yet inhuman, a voice bereft of the barest trace of emotion or feeling. A dead voice.

"I will see you dead a thousand times in a thousand lives."

The effect was instantaneous.

Her vision shifted back to normal to see the thug standing there, eyes impossibly open. His figure was taken by a pathological shiver, and in feverish panic he backed off step by step. "GET AWAY FROM ME!" His voice burned with fear, even as he stumbled and fell on his back. He did not stop, continuing to crawl backwards, shouting the same words on repeat.

The other three gave just the briefest of glances to their rambling leader and turned to flee, leaving Chloe alone in the alley with only one thought.

What the hell had just happened?

It took minutes until her mind took over again and reminded her of her objective.

The store Vanessa mentioned was sandwiched between two other stores much larger and much more flashier, more modern as well. Amongst the others it stood with an ancient, old aura about it, a retro feel of sort fitting the purpose for which she was there.

The door struck an old fashioned, brass bell as it opened, ringing softly across the store. Rows upon rows of shelves crammed in the store greeted her, filled with books and comics and music and movies and games, most of them older than today's stuff.

_Whoa. Warren would so love this. He'd have a geek orgasm just looking._

In a corner stood an inconspicuous counter, an aging man behind it with a half-eaten burger in his hands, which he placed back on its wrapper as he saw Chloe. He had a kindly, round face, with glasses sitting on the tip of his nose. He had a small amount of difficulty lifting his bulk from the chair. Yet for all that there was something in him that inspired trust.

"Welcome to Milverton's, young lady. I'm Jonathan Milverton. How can I help?"

"I was told this was the place to go to find a few old movies. Of the cult sort. I think I came to the right place." She whistled quietly. "That's one hell of a collection you have here."

"Well, you are in the right place indeed. This place... it's more a hobby than a job to me. I gather the things I love, like a collectioner. They just don't do things that good any more, or maybe they do but ol' me is too blind with nostalgia to see. If and when someone wants a piece of  my collection here, I sell it so that he may enjoy the same delight I've. Well, mostly. There's stuff not even I can part with." He smiled slightly. "Anyway, how can I help?"

"I need a copy of the Planet of the Apes. The first one, that is, the 1968 one." She added after a pause. "In a form that'll run on a DVD player, that is, or a computer failing that."

"Ah." Jonathan beamed. "That's a cult classic. It's good to see the new generation's appreciating it." He wobbled up towards one of the shelves. "Increasingly few people like the good old stuff, you know, kid? Most my customers are nostalgic adults these days."

"A geek friend got me into it, actually." She gave a faint smile. "He had spent a week raving about this drive-in that had a Planet of the Apes marathon he was taking a mutual friend to. Was as excited as a hamster on caffeine about the whole thing."

Jonathan chuckled as he moved down the shelves, scanning for the movie in question. "That's a boy in love, no two ways about it. One with a good taste in movies, at least." His head snapped up. "Ah, that's where it is. Um..." He turned towards Chloe. "I hate to ask this of my customers, but any chance you could take it yourself? I'm an old, fat and short man and my useless assistant is off sick today. The ladder is just over there."

"Sure." Chloe made her way over to the ladder, and climbed for the movie, returning back down swiftly with it.

"Thanks." The shopkeeper nodded. "Seems the new generation aren't all losing their manners. You know what, I'll throw in a discount for you, just because of that." He wobbled his way back towards the counter. "And do wish good luck on that friend for me: seems he'll need it. I can emphatize with him."

"He's dead." Words were out of her mouth before she could stop them. "He-he never got to take that friend to the drive-in." _A sacrifice on the altar for the sake of my goddamned life._

"Ouch. I'm-I'm sorry." Jonathan mouthed a few words. "My... condolences."

"I thought, he'd appreciate, wherever he is, if I did what he didn't get to do. For him. Thought it'd... keep his memory alive or something."

"That's... a good gesture." The old man nodded, handing her the movie. "Take it. Consider it a gift from ol' Milverton. For that friend."

"I-I shouldn't..." She trailed off, unsure of what to say.

Jonathan knowingly smiled. "I'm a couple times your elder, kid. I'm giving you a gift. Don't make a fuss. If it's making you uneasy, consider it from my son." His tone barely darkened. "I know how it feels to lose someone so young."

"I didn't." Chloe paused. "My condolences."

Jonathan shrugged it off. "Don't let it bother ya. It's been past forty years by now. Even I have gotten over it. So'll you. So'll that friend of yours. And if that movie does help?" Another shrug. "A gift well given."

"I see." Chloe nodded. "Thank you. I mean it." She turned to leave, still looking left towards the counter and Jonathan Milverton. "Good eve-"

The impact knocked the wind right out of her lungs and stopped her stride cold. Her head snapped back forward, and came face-to-face with a black tie. "Shit, dude, check where you're-" Her voice froze the moment she laid eyes on the face.

The man looked human, barely. Milky skin whiter than should have been possible, stretched taut over an elongated, bony skull, hungry eyes scanning everything, the leaning stance of a predator. Everything about the man screamed at her to _run,_ and never look back. "I mean, sorry!" She tried to leave past him.

A set of thin fingers caught her forearm with deceptive strength, and she turned back to see that hungry gaze on her, inquisitive. "Do we know each other?" The question hung in the air.

"I'm sure I would have remembered." 

"Possibly." The pale man squinted. "You remind me of a friend I used to have long ago. Though I must have been mistaken."

A few moments passed silently. "Let my arm go." Chloe's voice took a darker tone, a harder tone.

"Oh. My apologies." The iron grip vanished, and without another second wasted Chloe dashed out of the store.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> And In Her Wake is back, again, after the longest wait so far... In my defense, this time it isn't because of my procrastinating. Not saying I didn't procrastinate, because I did, but this time I had an excuse. Nothing like bad morale to throw someone head-first into games, and nothing like a set of fairly costly troubles to wreck morale... but enough of that. You aren't coming here to read me whining, do you? No? See. You come here because this story is totes, hella-wesome, yeah, I know. So, here you go. Chapter eight. Enjoy, and please do drop a review if you have anything to say or if you just liked it, because they do motivate me greatly. No obligation, though.
> 
> Disclaimer: I do not own Life is Strange or its characters.


	9. The Enigma and the Old Man

"Oh. My apologies." His iron grip vanished, and without wasting another second the blue-haired girl dashed out of the door.

He stood there, looking at his still-open hand with thoughtful eyes. An alien tingle ran from his fingertips all the way to his wrist, wherever he touched the girl's skin, and it softly and wildly burned. Something squirmed underneath his skin, a familiar motion, reassuring yet at the same time overwhelmingly worrying. Its inherent, dark intelligence, its connection to him at the deepest level... what moved within him was not merely part of him, but it was him.

The man's indomitable will reached out and crushed the motion dead, with no more compassion or mercy than one felt towards a tumour excised. 

"Look who it is." A voice struck him from the back. "So many years and still same as ever. I didn't think I'd ever see you in a suit. The signature longcoat don't cut it any more?" The shopkeeper's voice was cold, harsh, still distrusting. Still iron. 

"Thought I'd do a fashion change. The same style for that long eventually gets boring." He gave Jonathan Milverton a good, long look. The long years hadn't been kind on the man, his once cutting sharp figure bloated, a potbellied, old man lost to empty hobbies. Only the iron in his voice remained, the only thing that prevented him from walking out, convinced he had found the wrong person. "You have changed."

"Humans age."

"Like all things."

"My eyes say otherwise." Jonathan snapped back. "Why are you here?"

"I thought I'd go pay a visit to an old friend." He shrugged, looking at the old man. "Is it so unacceptable to go visit them?"

"Yes." His voice crackled like lightning. "You don't visit people for courtesy. You visit people so you can use them. And we are not friends. I've done damn better in the last forty-plus years without you than I did last time I saw you. Get lost."

"Millions of lives may be at sake here."

"Millions of lives are always at stake, somewhere." He turned back to walk towards his counter. "Your ravings about your sanctic mission never brought anyone any good."

He sighed. "You know I could make you listen to me."

"Right? With those tricks of yours? Sure you can. Go on. It'll only further my eventual resolve that you are a piece of shit. Only prove me right. Again."

"I know you miss it as well." He followed Jonathan. "The thrill, the investigation, the hunt. You never fully withdrew from seeking beyond the Veil."

"I said nothing about Veil-work. I said everything about you." He paused for a moment. "I distinctly remember telling you to get lost."

"One last time." His words rang in the empty store. "I know you hate me, Jon, and you have a perfectly valid reason. What is one inconsequential encounter to me which I will not even bother to remember a couple decades down the line is your entire life to you. I admit that we are not and we never were friends, as you said. I know and I admit that I hardly care. I admit that my 'sanctic mission' is above the petty concerns of humanity." He shrugged emptily. "Yet despite all that, I ask you to sit down and listen to me. For old times' sake, once more, and after then I'll walk out and we'll never see each other again."

"That's definitely you, then. 'I admit I hardly care'. Only you would try to convince someone to help him by saying you have fuck-all value for him." Jonathan paused. "And you will not bother me under any circumstances ever again. Your word?"

"On my pale flesh and on my fallen kin."

The storekeeper stood there for long seconds, his gaze still crackling, and then he fell on his chair which creaked under his weight. His shoulders slumped in defeat. "Damn you, bastard. Pull up a chair." With that he returned to his burger.

He arrived with a rickety old chair sitting by a corner, and dropped on it. "You still keeping that bottle under the desk? I've a feeling we both can use a drink."

"It is too early to start drinking." Jonathan shook his head, gruffy words forced out a full mouth. "No drinking, you hear me, whatever-your-name-is?"

"I go by John Alexander Galloway these days. Federal agent. Internal Security. Cozy job, just enough action, and great benefits. That's what I heard it's like, anyway. Maybe I'll pick it up for real." He let out a mild chuckle. "That girl. Friend of yours?"

"This is a store." Jonathan stated in a perfect deadpan. "People come to buy things."

He let another chuckle free. "I don't suppose you know her name or where she lives."

"Why would I?" The storekeeper shrugged, taking another bite. "I'd assume you were chasing skirts, but having known you somehow makes me doubt it."

"There is something... strange about her. Something I cannot exactly put a finger on. Special of sorts, I'd even say."

"Special?" Jonathan's voice lowered. "You mean _special_ , as in, Breacher?"

"No, I don't think so." He shook his head. "I could've thought that. It's not that different. But it is different. Not a Breacher. Something close, yet so far."

"You haven't lost anything from the crypticness, I see." Another bite. "You'll have to find her without me, anyway. Now I suggest you bring up the actual subject before I lose my patience. Or have you fallen so far that punk girls are your first objective these days?"

He shrugged. "Back to the subject, then. Been watching the news these days?" Jonathan answered by a nod only. "Then you must know what drew me here. Even I have gotten curious."

Jonathan chose to remain silent, so he continued. "I know you must have already started doing the Veil-work. This much is too significant for you to ignore."

"I suspected you would dig into this as well." Jonathan started. "The storm that broke the scale. That was what the news went on about. Just the thing for you. Go on. I see the words forming, your inherent need to have someone listen to your findings. Shoot. Was it a Breacher? Newly awakened, thinking like he's king of the world, no idea what he's tapping into?"

"I thought so for a while. A fresh Breacher, an aeromancer who lost control. Not like that never happened. If it was, though, he's almost surely dead. I admit I did not comb the town clear but I found only one person still breathing and even she took a good chunk of my strength to mend."

"That's... uncharacteristically compassionate of you to do."

"I thought she might know something. She didn't. Not even the deepest, darkest corners of her mind, she had no idea. Wasted energy." He shrugged. "Sometimes you take a gamble and lose."

"Deepest, darkest-" Jonathan froze. "You... I take that back." He shook his head in evident disapproval. "I wonder what I expected."

"I'd have to do it no matter what." The false agent shrugged off the implied insult. "Whoever she was, she didn't live her life unscathed. She had the old insight."

"The old insight? And you bound it?" The old man's eyes grew wide. "You are an enigma. I don't understand you. I never did."

"Am I now?" His voice took on an amused tone. "I do not think so. To me it appears eminently and perfectly reasonable. Just that we... _subscribe_ to different ways. But that's enough of a diversion." The false agent turned at the old man. "I believe I must be thankful to that girl nonetheless, because without her I likely would never have a reason to come to Seattle. Then I wouldn't be right on site to find what I found." That last word rang ominously.

"And what did you find?" Jonathan laughed lightly, then took a hefty bite from his burger. "Is it the apocalypse, eh? Armageddon? The end of the world?"

He gave no reply. Merely he took out a package from his jacket's inner pocket, about the size of a wallet and thickly wrapped in paper. It fell on the counter with a wet sound.

With a brow raised in skepticism, Jonathan took up the package, and slowly unfolded the paper. White leaves of paper soon turned to sickly green and crimson red. The lump of flesh fell from the storekeeper's hands and slapped squirming on the desk, wet and slick with blood and putrid ichor, and it stank with rot.

Jonathan buckled in half, barely dragging the bin underneath the counter to vomit his stomach out. He rose up only half a minute later, features pale and drained. "What-what is that shit? God, it stinks!"

"My jacket pocket might not have been a stellar place for preservation of flesh. Then again, it is not exactly dead" The man of many names laughed dimly, and prodded the still-squirming flesh with a pen snatched from the counter. "This, Jon, is what I anticipate lurks beneath this city today. Feast your eyes, for it is a sight seen by few Veil-workers. This, Jon, is what lies within the chest of a mania." He contemptuously reached out and stabbed the lump of flesh, which twisted harder once it did. "I suggest putting it somewhere safe before it infests anything." 

Jonathan shuddered, yet his voice was eminently curious. "You mean- wait, maniae. Right. I've storage in the back." He took a disgusted look at the squirming piece of flesh, and took a pair of gloves from a drawer under the counter. He picked up the flesh and went through the door at the back.

He returned three minutes later, still deathly pale. "Maniae... I wouldn't believe. It has been what, decades, since the last time they came?"

"Not even close. There has been an infestation just this year in Syria. Before that, Iraq. One was expunged during its starting phase in Afghanistan and they spring up like mad across Africa. But within the limits of the States, you'd be right. It has been a lot of years since what happened down at Texas." He turned grim. "But this one is far more severe than that abortive infestation."

"Now it all makes more sense, what happened last few days, that is. Everything that has the Seattle police running around cluelessly. It all makes sense." It did, now that the agent thought. It was not for simple artistic license that they were known as the Hounds of Havoc. "If there is a Maniae infestation beyond the starting phase then it has to be expunged at the earliest possible opportunity. For that we need to uncover the root. The patient zero." Jonathan continued, then he froze. "Hold on a second. First a scale-breaking storm, and just afterwards the Hounds of Havoc. Two of the seven." A gasp. "The Child. We have to act."

It made him want to laugh to hear that. "The Child? Again this nonsense? The Child is superstition. Falsehood. A concept, a supposed person, whose existence is impossible. The Child is a paradox, a logical impossibility unworthy of concern. I thought you were over such inane beliefs, Jonathan." He could feel the derision drip from his tone. The Child. What an absurd statement.

"First the storm. Then the Maniae. You cannot blame me for considering that the most evident of possibilities. The events correlate accurately with what is supposed to be.

"Coincidence. It has happened before, with the 1989 Dhaka tornado followed by the outbreak at Delhi, and before that by Hurricane Fifi-Orlene followed by a year-long infestation of Tegucigalpa." He shook his head. "I say it: the Child is a logical impossibility not worth worrying about."

Jonathan stood silent for a few seconds, until a mischievous smile appeared on his lips. "You are a logical impossibility."

He felt a scowl form on his features. "You believe so? Because then you have not understood me in the slightest, Jonathan. It is painfully simple, actually; I merely happen to operate on a structure of logic beyond your understanding."

Jonathan's smile grew even wider and even more wicked. "Precisely."

The word struck the false agent like a sledgehammer. _Precisely._ His smug stance vanished. The possibility of horror grasped him. Precisely. Precisely. _Precisely._ "You mean... no. It is an impossibility. It has to be." The alternative... he did not want to consider the alternative. He could not consider the alternative.

"Maybe it is. Maybe it is not. But if the Child has been conceived, birthed, then we cannot afford to not investigate the possibility." He shrugged. "It is still theoretical, though. The infestation is still the first of our concerns." He looked at the burgers, untouched since the Maniae subject became evident. "How many?"

Bony white fingers rapped on the counter in deep thought. "With the unfavorable but reasonable assumption that I have encountered the average city-wide spread and not an infestation motherlode I can predict an approximate of two hundred and forty-three post-hatchling Maniae in various maturity states. Minus eight, as of last night." He paused for a few seconds. "That's far too large for an infestation from scratch to be able to grow unnoticed."

"It is still an approximate two weeks short of critical mass and sufficiently small to enact a possible purgation. That gives us time to react." The old man fully geared into the role of the Veil-worker, the weight of age and corpulence giving way to new vigor. There was some of the Jonathan of old within him now, awakened. "Though the greater problem is less the physical threat but the havoc they can and already have started to cause."

"Which is part of the problem. We lack the resources to initiate a purgation of an infestation of that size. Not even I can do that on my own, not with the _Messorem_ inoperational, and we are risking a severe Compromise every second we delay." The false agent uttered, measuring possibilities against each other. "If we manage to locate the motherlode, that can allow me to severely curtail the size of the infestation and allow us time to react."

"There are far too few Veil-workers in Seattle to gather aid from. Even fewer of them are Breachers. And I have contacts with practically none." Jonathan shrugged. "I'll do my best, though."

"No. You won't." He lashed back. "I do not want you doing anything about the Maniae. Nothing."

"What?" Jonathan's outrage was clear. "Then why are you-"

"Leave the Maniae to me. I need you to dig all your city-wide contacts. You must unearth anything, anything at all, that is strange in Seattle. Anything beyond the bounds of reason."

"Heeellloooo." The old man's voice was mocking. "We are squat in the middle of a whole Maniae infestation. _Everything_ is going apeshit and it'll keep doing so. There is a reason the things are called the Hounds of Havoc."

Wordlessly the man under the false name of Galloway stood up and walked away, stopping only when he reached the door. "Here is a little secret for you, Jon, one few Veil-workers know about the Maniae. For all the menace of their name, of being called the Hounds of Havoc, their ability to cause discord and havoc, beyond what they could as  such creatures physically that is, is drastically less than what is claimed they are able to achieve. For all intents and purposes the Maniae do not create havoc."

"They do not? Then what?"

"Simple." Galloway shrugged. "They feed from it. They seek it, follow it. They come to where havoc will be wrought."

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> New month, new chapter... happy September, everyone! I'll be the bearer of bad news today: Tomorrow I'm returning to the university, which means I'll be markedly busier. I will do my best to cut my procrastination, but still expect a slow-down in upvotes. And well, this chapter is rather too short, and lacking in action... but it sheds some light into the shadows of Seattle, so I hope it'll work well. Enjoy, as always, and feel free to drop a comment: they are always inspiring.


	10. Talking to Myself

The snow crunched audibly beneath her feet.

Seattle was covered in white that moment. Max had heard people who liked snow and how it covered everything in a white, immaculate coating, how it made everything look clean and hid all the wear and dust and mud and dirt.

It didn't hide the rubble, though.

It did not hide the skyscrapers half-sheared off at the top, nor the tiny chunks and colossal slabs of concrete sprawled around. It did not hide the cracked roads and houses burnt out, nor did it hide former monuments to riches and prosperity now hollow and broken, like toothless maws agape all around.

Back when she was fifteen, Max had seen a picture of the Second World War taken from the air. It was Hamburg, if memory served, or was it Essen? Dresden? It was a sea of rubble, flattened in its whole, a few skyscrapers or rather, the remnants of them, standing tall but broken among it. She had not forgotten that picture since then. 

Seattle now looked awfully like it.

But strangely, it was not the ruin that most shattered her. It was not the scything cold cutting through her thin sweatshirt, slicing painfully down to the bone, that bothered her. No. It was that she had wandered this hellish vision for over half a hour, and she had not seen a single trace of another human being.

Tears kept welling up in her eyes. This was a bad dream. It had to be. But it did not make it the slightest bit easier. Oh God. Oh God...

"Bad, isn't it?" The voice was like a whip, thin, harsh, powerful and lashing in its unvoiced accusation. "As a matter of fact, it is horrendous."

She spun around towards the familiar voice, and came face to face with her nightmare twin seated on a pile of rubble. The other Max looked... battered, for lack of a better word. Bags had formed underneath her eyes, which were bloodshot with fatigue, and her hair was a dirty, ragged mess. She was dressed in worn jeans and a long, tattered longcoat, and her eyes haunted Max, accusing, venomous, but beneath it all just... burnt out.

"What- what happened here?" Max's voice was a whimper, fragile, on the verge of shattering. "Where is everyone?"

"What happened? What happened?" The other Max found the strength to laugh. "You happened, Maxine. You and that cowardly, irresponsible, chaotic bitch you killed a thousand people for. You happened."

"No." She shook her head. "I promised it. I will never rewind again. I would never rewind again. I can't ever rewind again." The words pounded at her head. You happened. 

"You won't?" Other Max laughed even more wildly. "You murdered a thousand people and did not even hesitate for the sake of one bloody joke of a friend. Did not even look back. What is a momentary rewind compared to that, huh? Just a handful of seconds here, a barely visible touch there, and voila! You have a living, not dead, not crippled, 'best friend' and nobody is any the wiser." Her fingers did the air quotes as she said 'best friend'. "Until, that is, the consequences strike."

"I will not cause another disaster. I won't." Max shook her head fiercely. "I learned the consequences. The hard way."

"The hard way? What? You took the easy way out, Maxine. All you had to do was to let her die as she was meant to. But it felt hard, no? It was easier to kill hundreds of innocents by inaction than one useless junkie by action." The other Max snapped. "Look at you, so high, so determined. What a brilliant façade. I'd even be fooled if I were not you, as much as the fact disgusts me." She paused a few seconds, a faint smirk playing on the edges of her lips as if she had just said something hilarious. "You won't cause another disaster? Well, too late, Maxine. You already did. You thought Arcadia Bay was bad? That was the fucking teaser trailer, you dipshit and you have started the making of a fucking ten-something movie franchise a la Mission Impossible. Congratulations."

"I never asked for this!" Max lashed back, sorrow and fear lost in a storm of boiling anger. "I never asked to turn from a shy girl whose biggest problem was the Everyday Heroes contest and the shitty photo I had for it to someone who could rewind time on a whim and who was responsible for a fucking tornado about to wreck my hometown! I went into bathroom one bloody Monday and voila. Superpowers I never asked for. Superpowers I had no idea what to do with. Nobody taught me anything. Nobody told me anything. All I tried was to do my best. All I tried was to... live." The pause and the word switch at the end was obvious. All I tried was to save people. But she knew what the other Max would answer that with perfect certainty.

"You wished for this, Maxine. You know you did. I know you did. Whenever you talked someone and the conversation didn't turn out as you imagined, whenever you tried something and it failed, you thought the same thing. 'If only I could take back time and do that again.' What were you expecting? Wish the same thing enough times and one day you win the superpower lottery. Congratulations." The other Max shrugged. "Look at what you did the first moment you got what you could do. You just went and used it to deceive people into believing you listened and cared, without a care for the consequences, getting friends the easy way. Look at what happened now. You killed everyone. This is what happens when it is so easy to cheat your way into friendship. Who cares if anything happens to them? You can always easily get more."

"I did not." Her vision became blurry. Wind began to slice into her cheeks harder as it found new dampness there. "No. I can't have... I don't believe you. You are a fucking liar! Liar!" 

Anger boiled within Max's veins. It pounded heavily in her skull, and her face began to burn despite the cold.

"Liar? Me? Last I checked I was not your junkie bitch of a love interest, my sweet Maxine. I am your conscience. The voice of reason and the sliver of humanity left in you."

That made it snap.

Max lunged on her nightmare twin, invigorated by hatred, hands clenched into fists that wildly lashed out without technique or finesse. The other Max ducked under the first blow, dodged sideways the second. The third flew, seemingly on the verge of connecting, until something hooked on her leg and pulled it out from under her.

She crashed on the rubble on her back, breath knocked out of her lungs with the impact. For a second she was thankful for the snow there softening her fall. That feeling lasted only until the seeping wetness and cold began to made itself felt on her back. Her nightmare twin returned to her view, looking... sorrowful now?

"At least you have the spirit to fight now. I'll take a grain of improvement over nothing." Her ragged hair lightly danced as she shook her head. "I do not lie to you, Maxine. Not to myself. You made this, or should I say, you will make this. You do not have the right to claim weakness. You brought this on us by your mistakes. The deaths you caused are beyond counting."

"Can't be." She breathed out,  looking for anything, anything, out of the notion. "Not- not everyone can be dead."

"Does it matter?" The other Max shrugged. "Look around you. If you believe all this happened without casualties you are so impossibly naive. What matters if the losses are four hundred thousand instead of seven? Let's reassure you, dear. Let's imagine the dead number only in the five digits. Do you feel any less like a murderer?"

The answer choked in Max's throat. No. She didn't.

"What a pity that it is not that light. Don't believe me? Go on. Take your time! A Seattle tour, I pay the bills. See if you can find one breathing human apart from us two." Her gaze burned holes through Max. "I suppose if you go far enough into the suburbs you might find a couple of them, if you consider them humans that is. Other than that, there is just me, you, and it in this city."

"Who?" The other Max's voice had quivered almost imperceptibly when saying 'it', had hushed ever so slightly, half in cowed reverence, half in abject fear. 

"It." The nightmare Max's lips turned thinner and sterner, unwilling to divulge much more. "Discord. Anarchy. Madness. Agony. Doom. Death. It."

"That... doesn't make sense."

"It will if you ever have the misfortune to meet it." The other Max's voice hushed more. "In a particular way, mayhaps I can say that it is your Child. With a capital C."

"Wait. No. That does not make any sense. At all." She breathed out, the wetness on her back growing increasingly agonizing, yet the ridiculousness of the statement made Max want to crack a laugh. "I'm not, I mean, pregnant or something? And I doubt I will."

A smirk danced on those lips again. "Does one have to be pregnant to birth a Child?"

"Um... yeah?" A chuckle forced her way out her lips despite her struggle not to. "That is, like, Biology 101?"

"Mayhaps." The other Max shrugged. "Or perhaps not. I guess you will see eventually. Though I fear the realization will hit far too late for millions of people. What can I say?" She shook her head. "As dense as expected. As futile as I expected."

"I don't exactly have the option to change." Max lashed back. "Maybe you are right. Maybe I wished for this. But I never had another choice. What was I to do? It's not like I could just close my eyes and wish my power away, because... because that was what I wanted to."

A mischievous glint burned in those tired eyes. "You wanted to lose your power? _Really?_ Fine, I will give you the opportunity." The other Max extended her a hand. "Take my hand, and you will be loosed from your curse of time. Take my hand, and you will wake up exactly as you were two weeks ago. Take my hand and you no longer will have power."

With great power came great responsibility. With great might came great duties. To be free of such burden. To be free of such threats. To be free... without ties and constraints, without horrors and madness of the world, without the powers stained by blood, just to be free, like that meadowlark she saw that friday.

To be free, on wings soaring in the sky.

To break her chains.

Max reached for her nightmare twin. The hands were tantalizingly close, fingers almost caressing each other, a hair's breadth in between them.

"Take my hand, and you can no longer protect her."

The words drove a spike into her head. She suddenly froze in pain, looking at those mocking eyes. Chloe flashed in her vision. Lying murdered in the Blackwell bathroom, raging at a world that gave her no cares. Curled up on the ground at the junkyard. Crunched to paste beneath a train. Smiling sadly in that accursed wheelchair. Falling, falling slowly with her arms spread open wide, a hole drilled into her forehead. Lying amongst a pile of rubble, her back brutally twisted in a way it was not supposed to be.

_I’ll just drift asleep... dreaming of us here together... forever._

Her arm fell back to her side.

The other Max laughed. "See? You do not want to. You cannot give away your power. Becausee you are so _hopelessly_ obsessed with that bitch, you prefer carrying a world-killing power for her sake rather than just give it up. You'd rather burn a billion souls rather than risk harm on her. How lucky she is, to have such a devout... _slave._ "

"You lie." Tears welled up in Max's eyes. "You lie. You could not do that. You lied to me. Did you?"

"Does it matter whether I did?" She shook her head. "For all you knew I was saying the truth. Perhaps I did. Perhaps not. But you were not even willing to take the _risk_ of losing those nifty powers of yours." The other Max sat down on a piece of rubble, ignoring the snow. "It is getting continuously more tenuous to survive here, Maxine, and you are positively _boring,_ and selfish and evil to boot. With my expectations, I will starve or freeze within the next week." A sad smile flickered on her lips.

"I believe it is time for me to take my leave on my own terms." Her hand disappeared under her coat, and came back out with a gun, a revolver, the gun Chloe once kept. She popped open the cylinder. "How much I'd like to shoot you, but alas, I have only one bullet left. Shame." She popped the cylinder back in. "I suppose that's it, dear Maxine.  I'll be taking my exit here. It seems we'll meet later in another timeline, maybe, one where you aren't such a dolt and Chloe less of a bitch. If so, let's go out for coffee one day. If not... well, we're used to that, isn't it?"

"No." Max breathed out. "Don't."

"Too late. You know what Chekhov said: if there is a gun on the scene, it's got to go off." She placed the gun underneath her chin. "Don't trust the pale. Run from the shrieks. And do not approach _it_. See you around."

"NO!"

The shot rang in the ruins.

Her eyes opened.

"Max? What's- what happened?" Max turned around to see drowsy blue eyes behind barely open lids, looking at her in befuddlement. Chloe rubbed her eyes tiredly. "You just-"

Max's eyes wandered wildly as she took in the surroundings. The old TV, the laptop connected to it, the setup that once played Planet of the Apes. She didn't remember its second half. Her room. It once felt like a sanctuary. A safe haven. The ruin flashed before her eyes. "I-I had another nightmare, Che. So much destruction." She breathed out. "So much death."

With an understanding smile, Chloe hugged her even more tightly. "Arcadia?"

"No." Max gasped. "Seattle."

"Tell me about it." Chloe held her tightly. "Everything."

"Chloe, I-"

"Just tell me."

And she did. Max opened her mouth and words left it in a torrent. She told Chloe of the visions. Of other Max. Of the nightmares, of worries, and endless fears, of the faces that haunted her in the dark. Of the burden on her shoulders.

And Chloe listened, listened, and listened. Until Max ran out of tears to shed and words to utter, until even her sobs began to die down, she listened.

"Max, I..." She seemed at difficulty to find words when she finally spoke. "I'm not SuperMax. I can't just snap my fingers and make things happen. I am just Chloe. That's it. I am ingenious maybe, sometimes, and I have a few tricks up my sleeve, but... I'm just Chloe." A pause. "But I promise you. Max. I will always be here for you. No matter what happens. No matter what strikes. I will be here for you, and I will _not_ let you live through such a thing again."

"T-thank you, Che. I-" It was only then Max noticed. On anyone else she would have missed it, but Chloe, she knew her too well to not realize it. Beneath her worried exterior was an unnatural paleness to her cheeks, a lingering fear in her eyes, a wild discord beneath a calm surface. "Chloe... are you alright?"

"You noticed, didn't you?" She shivered slightly. "I was going to tell it, but I decided to hide it when I saw how you were. Fuck, Max, I... I dreamt I was dead."

"Oh, Chloe... There's-"

"No, Max, let me finish." Chloe took a deep breath. "I dreamt that I was dead... but that I was alive."

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Oh, Nightmare Max... how rude.
> 
> Boy, that was long. Nearly two weeks without Wake... that's too much even for me. But at least I managed to finish a short chapter, eventually... I missed writing Wake, to be honest. I must procrastinate less.
> 
> Anyway, here is our next chapter, my few faithful readers: read on! I hope it proves enjoyable, and do drop a review if you want: they are renewing for me. See you soon-ish(hopefully) in the next chapter.


	11. Leap of Faith

Single Mother and Child Found Butchered

Another wave of blood splattered over asphalt. Another pair of lives snuffed out. Another murder evident to the wise and mystery to the mundane. Another red blotch on the map of paper. Another clue bought at the cost of two more lives. 

He closed the tab and turned on the map before him. That alleyway shifted ever so imperceptibly, different from what was there moments ago merely by the addition of two red skulls.

It was worth the cost. It didn't seem so at the moment, but experience told so. As far as things went, a mother and her child were a drastically light payment to make.

But one here, two there, the losses mounted up fast towards the limit of the acceptable. Especially considering the simple method of data analysis had helped him none.

Many murders and even more disappearances, and all spread so evenly as to render impossible any divination. No concentrations that would indicate the presence of more, no deaths and disappearances prevalent where they should not have been. Maybe simple luck, with his small sample size, but he could not help but think otherwise. It had felt as if... there was something smarter covering its tracks.

Precisely. Jonathan's mocking word rang against his skull. Precisely. 

No. He would not waste effort on chasing myths, not with an outbreak at hand. He had a very real and concrete problem at hand already. So much at stake. So little data to work on. Underground, he thought. They had to be hiding underground, hiding in the sewer network and metro lines, or their own caves and tunnels carven into the bedrock, where they could be anywhere in the city with ease and while unseen. 

But where, he had no idea.

He brought up a couple maps of Seattle metro and sewer network from the laptop, and mentally laid them over his red-marked map of the disappearances. No visible pattern. In times like this he missed even more the days of old, when he could rely on top notch data analysis to guide his hand. Not now. Not any more, and whatever he could do as replacement proved to be distinctly similar to a second line replacement. _If I had known how terrific it was to lose their aid for good... I would have at least been more respectful to them. Before they..._ He crushed the thought. Regrets were pointless, especially ones that would have changed naught but his conscience.

The cell-phone rang.

"I hope you have _something_ of substance, Jon." He tersely growled. "I am trying to make deductions here."

"That depends on what you consider 'of substance'. Have you found anything about the Maniae?"

"Negative. Been looking at their attacks all over the city. No pattern I can notice. It is as if they are deliberately picking prey in a way to randomize their pattern and obfuscate their steps. You have anything about the source?"

"No trace. All I can see so far is that things are going to turn very insane very soon, but that was a given with the Maniae here. But... I couldn't draw any direct lines but maybe you can. I looked into those murders. Not the Maniae ones, with vanishing corpses and gnawed bones and street-long blood sprays I've no idea how the police is keeping hushed up, no, but the actual, human-made ones. Though... 'human' doesn't fucking suffice."

"I would say otherwise. I know from experience how savage human beings could be." The flash of a rifle butt in the mud flashed in his mind, the sparkling of rows of pikes, and the thunder of heavy hooves behind lance-points lethal. "The murder spree is well within the human ability of brutality."

"I would like to have a higher opinion of my species." Jonathan grunted back. "Those are just... brutality for the sake of it. The corpses are universally, completely savaged. But the problem? That's not the worst part. The worst part is? The murders that do not appear to be Maniae-work have passed sixty, and that's just the ones that they found the corpses for, and so far there are simply no motives."

"That is puzzling."

"I do not think it is." Jonathan retorted back. "Think, _Galloway._  People are massacring each other with the full might of human savagery, without bounds, and without motives. Disorder. Discord. Total insanity."

"The wet dream of any Maniae." The false agent nearly punched the nearest wall. "But that does not explain _what_ exactly is causing this."

"It does not. But that is so far what we have. Something is making people go murderously, ravenously mad."

"So supremely helpful." Galloway growled. "I have to excise the Maniae before their numbers approach an outbreak.   That would severely impede our attempts to uncover this mystery."

"And cause tens of thousands of deaths, which I am sure is your primary concern here." Jonathan's tone was scathing. "But yes. That infestation has to be dealt with."

"I'll need firepower. Anyone you know?"

"Firepower? Not really my line of work but I can pull some strings. Get you some heavy hardware." Jonathan whispered. "Now that I said it I hope this line is as untraceable as you said."

"Oh, what a great idea. Get me a few hundred assault rifles, some machine guns and grenade launchers as well! Then I'll just have the obviously minor matter of finding an _army_ to wield it." He lashed back.

"Hey, you said fir- Oh." Realization audibly hit Jonathan. "You mean 'firepower' as in _that_ way. Well, there's this fellow I know. Four years in the Marines. Real solid Breacher. I can arrange his help. There's a few others I know, but Spencer is the only proper fighter among them. Uh, and there's this gal. Explosive in every sense of the word. Pint-sized annihilation. But..."

"But what?"

"She's a mage."

"Not an option." Galloway snarled back. "I do not work with magi. _Never._ "

"Oh come on." Jonathan sighed. "Be reasonable. You are not in a situation to refuse possible allies. For once do not be so s-"

"I. Said. No. Magi." He growled in a tone that made it clear the discussion was over. "I'll take the Breachers. Keep investigating." He terminated the call, paused a second, then slammed a fist at the wall in fury.

_On the razor's edge, you get cut no matter what you do._

Too much to do alone, too late to do alone, yet the threat of the Compromise hung behind each possibility. He looked at the map. Deaths. Many deaths. And nothing to be found by logic.

Sometimes... one just had to ignore logic, take a leap of faith, and wish for the best.

He took out his phone, and dialed in a number.

"Seattle Police Department, Precinct West. How can we be of assistance?"

"Good evening. My name is John Alexander Galloway, Department of Homeland Security. I called to inquire after the captain in charge of the precinct. I request a meeting, if possible. It is a matter of severe importance. Yes, I see. Thank you. I will be there."

* * *

Tell what you will about the Americans, but least they have decent police precincts.

Galloway parked a rented black Sedan in front of the precinct. It was a temporary replacement to the original car of his, now at the hands of that Chase girl. Again he pondered about whether to take the time to get it back, and again he decided it: its presence would be better served in her hands. And he had the funds to spend.

Wordlessly he entered the precinct, pausing for a moment to adjust his tie. He had taken the time to change back into a fresh suit sharply ironed, black fabric contrasting with his skin. It was always worth the time to dress to expectations, he had found.

Many eyes tracked him with curious stares, but few questioned his presence. Such was the secret: he who looked like he had the authority to be there, he who walked with purpose, was rarely questioned.

Everywhere people always saw what they expected to. Of course, a careful sliver of sorcery helped.

"Can I help you?" A young man at the front desk inquired as he walked in. "Sir?"

He took out his wallet and opened it. "Agent Galloway, Homeland Security. I've an appointment with your captain."

His stance was visibly nervous as he looked at his wallet, then down on a notebook, then the wallet again and finally at him. "Yes, Agent. Your arrival has been mentioned. Captain Winchester is in her office, on the third floor."

Returning a simple thanks, Galloway continued his gait up the stairs, until he found the office. His knuckles rapped on the door.

"Come in."

And that he did. The captain's office was, with one word, spartan, sparse in feature or ornament. Only attentionworthy was a single flower grown in a pot by the window, a single yellow thing that passed for the only decoration present. Her head turned towards the false agent, and for a moment bulged in suppressed shock before regaining its composure.

"Agent Galloway, I presume?"

Captain Winchester was a hard woman from her appearance. She might have been attractive once and beyond the sternness in her gaze and the age of her now middle-aged features, one could call her so still. Yellow hair was done in a tight bun and dark black eyes glistened under hard eyebrows. It was someone forged by fire and ash. 

"Indeed. Captain Winchester? Pleasure to meet you." Galloway nodded slightly as he moved to seat himself. "John Alexander Galloway. Call me John."

She raised a brow. "John. That's unnervingly friendly of you from what I'd expect from a federal agent."

"That's expectably hostile of a provincial." And in merely ten seconds, the false agent realized again why there was that perpetual dislike between central agencies and provincial police. 

"We have reasons to act such." Captain Winchester frowned. "I have little love lost for the Feds."

"And I have little love lost for the provincials and a very short fuse. So if you keep pushing me, Captain, I am likely to explode." He paused just until Winchester opened her mouth to reply. "Which is likely to be severely detrimental, because at the moment I am all that stands between you and a complete catastrophe that you will have to deal with."

"What do you-"

"I see you have an interest in history, Captain." He cut her off, turning around to look at the shelf behind him. "Is that David Glantz I see? Great historian. Perhaps a bit prone to erring when evaluating facts but his research is solid. Good pick."

"Why are we talking about this?" Winchester boredly muttered. "You know this is ridiculous, Agent. 'Oh, there is a catastrophe coming, let's talk about books'. I sense a severe problem of wrong priorities."

"A good conversation has value above most in this wretched world." He shrugged lightly.

The captain stood silent for a few seconds, analyzing. "Fine. I'll bite. John Alexander Galloway, huh? That's not a common surname, is it? You must not know a lot of people with it."

"That I don't. It's Scottish in origin. Especially rare in the States. Never even heard of anyone here with the name." He eyed her curiously. Strange thing to be curious of. "I used to look deliberately for colleagues with the name. Just for the fun of it."

He had lied, of course. He had known at least one Galloway.

"I see. I can see why it is rare: Scots were comparably few over here in the States. I think you are the only person who mentioned Scottish ancestry to me."

"As a matter of fact I have no Scottish ancestry I know of." He shrugged. "It is the result of a series of... strange circumstances that I acquired that name."

"Sounds like an intriguing tale."

"It is, but one for another time." He stood up and walked towards the shelf, picking up one of Glantz's books. "I must admit I am supremely shocked, in a good way, to see someone reading heavy on European history. And not merely any, but this: Zhukov's Greatest Defeat. I'd never think a lot of Americans would even have heard of the Rzhev salient, let alone having read about it. History education is in an abysmal state here, I have you would agree."

No answer came from the captain, but he felt the movement in the air, knew it as if he was looking straight at her. 

"I do not think that is a good idea, Captain." He placed the book back on the shelf.

"Turn around. Raise your hands. Or I will plug you right here and now." The voice was stern, unwavering. 

"Much courage you have. To hold an agent at gunpoint." The false agent shrugged. "Courageous indeed, albeit perhaps not the smartest move."

"It would be if you were an agent." The police captain snarled. "Far as I am concerned, I hold a criminal at gun point."

"And might I ask how you reached this opinion?" His eyes still glanced over the shelf.

"As a matter of fact, I've known the actual Agent Galloway. That is an impersonation which would not fool a child. You do not even look like the man." Her voice suddenly hardened. "Turn around and raise your hands."

"My conscience and personal code demands, Captain, that I warn you that this is a very bad idea, and that I will not hold responsibility for what is to happen if you persist."

"You have until I count to three to do so. One."

"I take it as a refusal." He shrugged.

"Two."

The man with the mask of Galloway raised a hand to before his face, and a faint, pale gleam ran down his fingers.

"Three."

No gunshot came.

"I did tell you, Captain, it was a bad idea." He finally turned around to look at her. She stood there, both hands on the pistol pointed at him. The muscles of her arm bulged with effort, her face turned red and veins appeared in her neck from the strain, yet her trigger finger did not move an inch. Her eyes were wide open in abject shock. "And you had read Zhukov's Greatest Defeat. I would think it would be an evident lesson from it to take from it, the folly of underestimating one's foe. But then again, maybe I judge others too harshly. It's easier to take lessons when you see them first hand."

"What-who-what are you?" Her eyes opened even wider. Her mouth opened to scream, and froze open. 

"I do not think so." He lowered his hand, the gleam dying out. "If you call for help I will have to kill them, and to do so is supremely counterproductive. I think it is better this way, no, Captain? Blessed silence." 

Her eyes moved wildly in response. Only her eyes moved.

"Now, I will breach the subject. Let's agree on the rules: you want to agree to what I say or say 'yes', you will blink twice. To say 'no', you will blink thrice. If you want me to repeat, you will roll your eyes. Do you understand, Captain Winchester?" 

Two blinks. He returned to his seat. "First off, I will have you know I am sad I had to resort to this. I came here for your own good, yet you pulled a gun on me. So brave, yet so supremely stupid. Color me impressed." He took a deep breath. "But first, now you figured it out; let me tell you. The official records would tell you that John Alexander Galloway is in a... secret assignment. Off the radar, if you will. Truth of the matter is, he's probably not more than a skeleton by now. Heard fish are fond of dead flesh, though I can hardly testify."

Her eyes rippled in fear.

"If it will reassure you, I did not kill him. He was one hell of a troublemaker for me, and I freely admit I was going to, but I recognize a worthy adversary. A shame he found his death on other hands, or talons should I say. It was a worse death than the one I intended to give him. As is, I merely manipulated enough paperwork to be able to wear his identity. Considering his modus operandi and assignment, few enough recognized him that I never had problems. I presume that made me grow too careless, and here you suffer from it. I do apologise for my mistake."

He looked into growing eyes as he continued. "But let me start into the actual matter I am here, Captain. I appear to have found myself in dire need of manpower. To further elaborate, I need your men by tomorrow dawn. Every duty-ready officer you can scrounge by then, I require at attention. You will cancel all patrols, empty outlying stations, pull men from all duties. Convince the rest of the Seattle police to intervene. I do not care if the city burns: consider your police department requisitioned, because if we do not act swiftly we will all burn. Do you understand this?" 

Two blinks, a short pause, then a third.

"Confused? Worry not. You will understand, Captain. It might cause problems to do so, trouble from above, but you will falsify anything you can, laugh at their backs and keep pouring every resource into this. Three days, Captain, starting tomorrow. This is how long you need to hold out. Because by then we will have either succeeded, and you will become a hero, or we will fail and then this city will have far greater problems than an apparently rogue police force."

Two blinks in terrified eyes.

"Good." He filched around in his pockets until he found what he sought, a tiny token of cold brass and a long, thin incisor of the same metal. He stood up and approached the captain, placing the token in her elbow pit as her eyes went wild in abject terror. Then with the incisor he opened a gash along her forearm, ending under the token at the elbow pit.

First he ran the incisor along the pooling blood, and pressed the now bloody metal on her face, drawing symbols older than him and all his kin. He started from the forehead, then the cheeks and neck. He then proceeded to wipe the blood off the incisor, and take the bloodied token, pressing it at the base of her neck. Words older than iron and older than fire passed through his lips.

The eyes winced in pain and the metal token submerged beneath the skin. The blood-marks began to steam lightly and melted away, leaving only a redness to the skin beneath. 

"There, there." He ran a hand over the forearm and let the skin knit back together. "Now, Captain, what I want you to do is to calm down and feel. Feel what little is left to you. Feel having no control of your flesh feels like, being able to move your eyes and little else. Remember the feeling. Because once we reach an agreement, I will release you from it. Do not forget how it feels."

Galloway returned to his seat. "You will abhor me with all your might after this, Captain. So I will not be surprised if you tried to stab me in the back later. Try to turn on me and take your revenge with all your might. In fact I would be disappointed if you did not. So forgive me for taking precautions.

What I have done to you is a spell implant, effectively a sorcerous bomb on countdown. Exactly two weeks from now on, it will activate, unless I dispel it. So remember well the feeling, because if I am not around to break it before the two week mark it will result in near-complete paralysis. The feeling now?" Galloway smirked. "It will be the only thing you will know for the rest of your life. The way healthcare works here, what you can afford will be effectively useless. If I feel generous I might pay for your treatment. You might regain some ten percent of function in that case. Maybe just enough to speak."

The eyes went wild, incoherent, and welling up with unshed tears.

"Now, the possibility stands that you are a selfless enough public servant that you will accept the totality of that and strike at me still. I do not expect you to do so. You are a divorced mother with two children in need of you. However you may still prove me wrong. If you do that, a friendly advice, be very sure to take me out for good. Because if you try and fail, I will not be satisfied with the inevitability of your ruin. I will seek out your children next. No, I will not kill them, that would be merciful. Do you want to imagine your daughter scratching her eyes out and clawing at walls of stone for the rest of her miserable life in an insane asylum? Or your son. Maybe he would be stuffed in prison for a horrendous crime. Oh, how devastating it must be to face iron proof of committing a crime you have no memory of. Murder, perhaps? Or..." He paused a second. "There are criminals far more appalling than murderers, no?"

The tears broke halfway through his speech, running down an immobile face in rivers.

"I will make you a hero, Captain, or a ruin." He let go of the sorcery, and Winchester collapsed, without even the will left to stand. "Have we a deal?"

"Yes." It was a whimper among uncontrollable sobs, a whimper without will. 

"I will deliver you the instructions tonight. Muster your men, Captain, and give me the Seattle police tomorrow dawn." He stopped just as he was about to open the door, and turned around, putting his most friendly smile on.

"Oh my. How inconsiderate of me. I am truly sorry. I almost forgot." He took out the package, lightly blue and gleaming in the light, tied with a yellow ribbon. "It's the 19th birthday of young James today, no? I saw him, determined, smart lad. I think he wants to follow in your footsteps. Consider this my gift to him." He placed it on the table. "You have a great son. I wish the best to him."

And he walked out.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> You were thinking this was dead, were you not? No, In Her Wake returns!
> 
> Long time, no see? Been nearly a month and I cannot fault you for thinking it was dead. But well, back when I started writing this I promised it I'd finish it. So to the hell with delays: I'll see this done even if I have to post a chapter a year(pray not!). I may have very few followers and even fewer fans but who cares! Even if only one person reads this, I'll write it.
> 
> That does not, however, mean I care not for reviews. I truly do, so if you want to say anything please do it. Other than that, have fun, and see you soon-ish(hopefully sooner than nearly a month, at least)!


	12. Into the Breach

"Quite some work you have done there, Captain." Galloway greeted her as he entered her makeshift command post. "Congratulations."

Captain Winchester gave him a glare that would leave any man quivering in exchange. Unsurprising, that was. He would have been unpleasant as well in the same circumstances. "Cheer up, Captain. The air is clean and crisp, the sky clear blue. Today is a good day to be a hero."

"Don't." Her voice quivered ever so slightly. "Don't do that."

"Don't do what?"

"I will do what you say. I have no choice. But do not act as if you are my friend." She inhaled deeply. "You have humiliated me enough without this... farce."

"But I am your friend, Captain. Even if you do not believe me, we are allies in this. And when this is all over, we will separate, you as a hero, and me with a clear conscience."

"Just... just shut up." The captain was painfully weary. "Just bloody shut up."

"Oh my, Martha. You are bad." He would admit to a slight degree of satisfaction in seeing her freeze when he switched to a first name basis. "When this is all over you should go home. Take a holiday, perhaps. Why, you look like you have aged a decade in a day." Then he patted her back lightly, feeling her shudder terribly under his touch. "Worry not. It'll be okay."

"Stop." She looked up at her. "Stop pretending to be amiable. You are not. You are a rabid beast to put down. Stop it. _Please_."

Galloway shook his head in resignation. "You'll come to see things from my point of view one day, though I hope you do not. But first we must win. Are your men deployed?"

"They are." Winchester looked at him. "I have heaped the better half of the Seattle police ready to descend. Their briefing has been... limited, as instructed."

"Good. I presume they are all at the jump-off." He looked at the street. "Anyone civilian been here before today? Asked after me?"

"Only passers-by. Why, expecting visitors?"

"As a matter of fact yes. Very late visitors." He shrugged. "Seems I must adapt. Initiate deployment. I am going in with a team in Sector B-12."

"Why there, in particular?"

"Let us call it a hunch."

Winchester knew too well to push. Instead she jabbed her nose at something behind him. "Van that way. That your visitors?"

"Possibly." He turned to look at the white van as it came to a halt, four people leaving it. The driver was a tall, well built man with hair short cut, ebony skin glistening under the sun, with an older, balding man riding shotgun. A young, petite woman left the rear seat, dragging with herself a frail, thin man looking as fragile as a stick, eyes sealed shut.

He walked out to greet the odd bunch, eyes fixated on the driver. "Spencer?"

The man fiercely nodded. "Agent Galloway?" 

"The one and only." The false agent reached out a hand and let Spencer shake it. "That's your bunch?"

"You could say so." He shrugged. "A good bunch we are."

"I am sure you will be. Now tell me, Spencer, what can you guys do?"

"Andrew can create lightning and channel it. Tamara can warp flesh to her will. And Sam-"

"There will be fire, not-Agent." The fragile man cut in, with a raspy voice. "There will be fire, brighter than Sun, hotter than hell."

Galloway tensed. "Never call me that again, or-"

"You would kill me. Sorry. I saw." He nodded, eyes still closed. "I will show restraint."

"Sam has... visions of future." Spencer interceded. "Very accurate ones, usually."

"Oh, great. A prophet. I do not like prophets." Galloway spared another glance at the man. "Why does he walk around with eyes shut?"

"He says when he does open them, he sees everything and everyone as they eventually will be."

"Dead." Sam cut in. "Dead and ruined."

"I see." _It would be a mercy to kill him by this point._

"You will think it would be a mercy to kill me." Sam continued. "I am tempted to agree."

"Don't say that!" Tamara cut in. "Nobody lives so bad that it is a mercy to die. _Nobody._ "

A laugh rang in the street. It was Galloway, laughing with unexpected mirth, unable to stop himself as he laughed away. "Oh my. Such naivete, my sweet child... never lose your innocence. Never." Then he turned towards Spencer, ignoring the scorching look he was receiving from the girl. "What about you?"

"I do not miss, Agent."

Galloway raised a brow, wordlessly.

"That's what I can do. I do not miss a shot, or a throw, or something similar. _Never._  Not a flashy trick but it works."

"Understood." Galloway looked at the team. "The prophet's staying here with Command. You three, get yourselves over to Sectors F-2, A-11 and B-5. Your pick." He handed them the map. "We'll radio ahead and let the people know. Any questions?" 

"Is that true, Agent?" The woman by the name of Tamara interceded. "Is there really-"

"Yes, there really is _that_ in Seattle. I presume you weren't expecting to go into the sewers to get a whiff of their distinctive bouquet. Anything else?"

Three sets of eyes and one set of eyelids wordlessly looked at him.

"Good. Get going." 

* * *

A hole appeared five or so centimeters underneath the bottle.

She groaned under her breath. Normally she would roar and shout and curse. But she only had enough energy or patience for a groan: all curses she could muster, from the simplest to the most colourful, had already ran out half a hour ago.

She wiped out sweat off her forehead, and took a few seconds to breathe deeply. She sucked at this. Yes, for the first time, Victoria Chase sucked epically at doing something, and she freely admitted that.

At least there was nobody watching.

So many years away from home, and Victoria had forgotten how to hide things from her parents. It was easy when she was away at Arcadia, where she only had to choose what and what not to mention to them. Here? She actively had to make up things, both because of her proximity to them and the federal issue property that had become a recent factor. 

That bloody agent. He was still etched in her memory, unforgettable in that pale, hungry stance of his, long, bony fingers, skin glistening as if ivory. Half her mind wanted to run away even from his memory, to hide and close her eyes and just wait until he was nowhere in sight. The other half, though, felt strangely drawn to Galloway, in the same way a child would be.

_He did protect me in that alley._ She breathed out. _I would be dead otherwise._ But she wouldn't be in that alley to begin with if not for him. But she might have been still in Arcadia or even under that custody if not for him.

But, but, but, but... It was frustrating. Something she had no desire to think about now. She raised the gun again and took aim. Carefully. Slowly. Pull the trigger-

_I told you to not stray, Victoria._

The voice spoke, and her aim went off, sending the 9mm cartridge flying off into the unknown and a curse teetering on the tip of her tongue.

There. Those damned words etched in her mind, scratching at the surface of her conscious. Words unknown and unheard yet seared into her memory. I told you to not stray, Victoria. 

The words at the forefront of her mind, the only constant of her new life. Sometimes it was a harsh tone, scolding, like her mother would be when really and very angry. Sometimes it was regretful, apologizing, even. Sometimes it was emotionless, the cold drone of a machine. Sometimes it was mirthful, laughing, mocking. Sometimes it was catlike, in a strange way that made her feel like a mouse.

Sometimes, however, it was simply... disappointed. That was the worst of it, a tone that made her bristle deep down, a tone that hurt; for a reason hard to understand. Why was it that the disappointment in a voice of a man she barely knew, speaking words she never heard, caused that veiled sting?

Speaking of questions, why was she here?

As if meaning to answer, her vision blurred.

_"IT SLEEPS NO MORE!"_

_"Get the fuck away from me, psycho!"_

_"Are you alright, Victoria?"_

_"He did not die."_

_"The world is... bizarre."_

Through the veil of darkness two burning eyes looked at her, and Victoria recoiled backward, chest heaving in deep breaths and gun in hand pointed at a nonexistent enemy.

She lowered it, drenched in sweat, and tried to dispel ominous, dreadful thoughts. Seattle was insane enough as is, with madmen who did not die when full of bullets and superpowers agents lurking in the streets. Her mind seemed the only haven from the events, and it felt like an invasion to have memories surface all so abruptly.

No. She had more important things to focus on, such as how to better her handling of a gun only using YouTube tutorials and intuition and movie knowledge. It was not proving to be the most successful of methods... but that's what you get with a gun registered on someone else, ammunition acquired less than legally, and no friends or family who knew how to use a gun.

_Mother would kill me if she saw me here._

Nevertheless, despite the fact that she failed to hit a single target in three practice sets so far, Victoria had to admit that there was a certain tranquil in shooting. Relaxing, even peaceful in a way. Like a camera, she thought. Point and shoot.

She had never been this bad with a camera, though, and it was insulting.

She raised the gun again. She was not going to stop this until she started hitting: she was god-bloody-damned Victoria Chase! She simply did not fail this miserably! She refused to fail, raised the pistol, steadied her aim...

_Left and up._ A thought filled her. _It will miss._

Hands moved the pistol ever so slightly left and up as if following another's orders. They pulled the trigger, Victoria not even sure whether she had consciously decided to. And the bottle exploded to pieces.

_Whoa. That was str-I HIT A BOTTLE!_

The feeling of mystery left over from the subtle thought vanished the moment she recognized the full gravitas of what had happened: she had succeeded! 

"I knew it! I knew it! I knew I could do it, and I did it!" She shouted out loud. "Victoria! Victoria! Victoria!" It was a strange feeling to be cheering for oneself. Sad, even, for one needed friends to share one's triumphs with. If only Taylor... her celebratory mood sulked in an instant.

Taylor. Lord. She looked at the gun in utter distaste. The broken shards of glass on the ground reminded her of unspoken triumphs. 

It was time to call it quits for today, she decided as she walked to her car. She had made her first successful shot since she started practicing, yet now her mood was no less sour than when she had arrived.

Had she been in a less sorrowful mood, she could reflect on the irony in success no longer bringing joy to Victoria Chase, of all people.

* * *

 

Six blazing eyes emerged from the tunnel ahead, accompanied with an ear-splitting, sanity-cracking wail.

Galloway did not hesitate even a fraction of a second as a gleam ran down his arm. "Fire!"

Half a dozen firearms spat lead into the darkness, using the eyes to guide their aim. Bullets struck concrete, water, and targets, which began to come without hesitation. Galloway let the gleam build up in his fingers and flung it, a bolt of energy coalescing into a spear-shape mid-air before skewering a Mania head to tail. Next he felt more than heard a bullet course past, and strike another in the eye. It must have found the brain, for the whole thing fell like a puppet with strings cut.

The third, however, lunged on and past the attack, bullets skittering off its armored skin, leaping with jaws open towards its decided target, the agent itself. He clenched a fist, and a wave of force hit the creature mid-air with enough force to make a loud snap reverberate in the tunnels. The inhuman shape slammed into the wall so hard the concrete cracked. Its body twitched once, twice, then remained still.

"What the hell was that?" One of the policemen lowered his weapon ever so slightly, looking at the thing's broken form. It stood two meters long minus the short tail, its flesh twisted and almost molten into shape, long claws scraping the ground when it walked. A typical specimen, grown, vicious. 

"Were you sleeping at the briefing, Officer Stevenson?" The false agent shrugged. "You must have been told that you were being deployed against an infestation. This is that infestation. Or were you expecting to see so many well armed personnel deployed to exterminate sewer rats?" Amusement found his way into that voice. 

"No, I mean no, Agent, but... these things... This is far beyond us. We should call in the National Guard."

"A shame then, that you are all we have." He picked up the radio. "First contact on our end, Captain. Chalk up a batch of three."

"Done. That's the first contact on your sector: we can now estimate the approximate size of the red zone." After the yesterday's events, it was a wonder how Captain Winchester remained coherent, but there she was, with iron professionalism coordinating the descent into sewers. He made a mental note to find a way to arrange a promotion for the woman: it was deserved. 

"What's the statistics?"

"With your lot, makes thirty-four so far. Our losses are negligible, especially considering what we are facing."

Galloway chuckled. "Already a tenth of estimated total. We're drowning the bastards in men and materiel. I keep half-expecting someone to complain: 'Come on, Agent, it's the communist tactic!'" He laughed at his own joke.

"My city is under attack, Agent Galloway." Her tone stung. "Pardon me if I am not in the mood to laugh after discovering there is a legion of nightmares under my feet."

"Now, Captain, don't you feel thankful I was around?" He looked at the radio with a shrug. "Galloway out."

"Agent? Permission to speak freely?"

"I'm all ears, Greene. Let's hear it." He looked at the middle-aged officer.

"What the hell are you, sir?"

"Me?" Galloway paused for a second. "Sleep pills. Yes, sleep pills. I guess you could liken me to that."

The officer looked at him in befuddlement. "What?"

Galloway shrugged lightly. "I work just like that. I allow all of you to sleep easy and untroubled at night." The agent turned back and looked at the tunnel ahead. "Carry on."

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> I. AM. BACK.
> 
> Sorry for taking so long: but granted, I had reasons. Since the last update, I had my exams(which butchered me worse than Galloway butchered that madman back in Chapter 7), a handful of personal problems, my computer began to hold on to life by a thread, and all kinds of stuff. And yes, I procrastinated, more. It could be that this chapter would take even more to come, but I figure one month is more than long enough, so I will post this as is. Good to return to this, and to see you back!
> 
> In the next chapter, which I promise will come sooner, we'll return to everyone's favorite Arcadians. Until then, enjoy this, and stick around!


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